City Girl in Training
City Girl in Training
Liz Fielding
Praise for RITA
Award-winning author LIZ FIELDING
About The Bride, the Baby and the Best Man:
“A wonderful story with emotionally driven characters, cracking scenes and a fantastic plot twist.”
—Romantic Times
About And Mother Makes Three:
“Ms. Fielding continues to delight me with her storytelling and rich prose. She is now on my automatic-buy list.”
—Bookbug on the Web
About Dating Her Boss:
“Liz Fielding pens a brilliant tale…as she beautifully weaves together a strong emotional conflict, entertaining wit and two dynamic characters.”
—Romantic Times
Dear Reader,
We’re constantly striving to bring you the best romance fiction by the most exciting authors, and in Harlequin Romance
we’re especially keen to feature fresh, sparkling, emotionally exhilarating novels! Modern love stories to suit your every mood—poignant, deeply moving stories; lively, upbeat romances with sparks flying; or sophisticated, edgy novels with a cosmopolitan flavor.
All our authors are special, and we hope you continue to enjoy each month’s new selection of Harlequin Romance titles. This month we’re delighted to feature another book with extra fizz! In Liz Fielding’s fast-paced, witty novel, meet Philly and laugh along with her (and at her!) as she attempts to become a city girl in London….
We hope you enjoy this book by Liz Fielding—it’s fresh, flirty and feel-good!—and look out for future sparkling stories in Harlequin Romance. If you’d like to share your thoughts and comments with us, do please write to:
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Happy reading!
The Editors
City Girl in Training
Liz Fielding
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ONE
The house is on fire and you only have time to grab one item of clothing. Would you choose:
a. the kickin’ hot purple leather miniskirt that turns heads in the street?
b. your expensive go-anywhere black suit?
c. a pair of washed-thin jogging pants that you were wearing when you first met the man of your dreams?
d. the designer skirt you bought in a sale? You’ll never get a bargain like that again.
e. the sweater knitted for you by your grandmother?
‘ARE you sure you don’t want to take this sweater, Philly? Aunt Alice will expect to see you wearing it at Christmas…’ My mother looked up when I didn’t answer and caught me looking at the quiz in the magazine she’d bought me on her last-minute dash to the shops. ‘Save that for the journey, dear,’ she said, as if I were six years old, instead of nearly twenty-three, ‘or you won’t have anything to read on the train.’
I heroically resisted the urge to tell her that while I was the baby of the family, the one who didn’t get a starred first at university, I was quite capable of buying myself a magazine, and instead gave her my full attention. Her question, however, had been purely rhetorical. She’d already unzipped the corner of my case and tucked away the sweater.
It figured.
I’d been haunted by that sweater ever since my Great-Aunt Alice had knitted it for me. It was pale blue and fluffy and I loathed it. I’d planned on putting it in a carton of clothes to be stored in the attic, hoping that a moth would consider it a suitable home for her offspring.
‘You really should have bought a new case. I’m not at all happy about this zip.’
‘The zip is fine,’ I said. At least it had been fine until my mother had added that sweater. ‘I’m catching a train to London, not flying to the other side of the world.’ Unlike my parents who were abandoning me, throwing me upon the mercy of strangers while they went on a world tour visiting their far-flung offspring.
My father had taken early retirement and it was, my mother had told me, time for them to have a little fun visiting my three clever and adventurous brothers in New Zealand, California and South Africa, respectively. And my beautiful, and equally adventurous, clever married sister, and her new babies, in Australia.
Fun! They were parents. Parents weren’t supposed to have fun. They were supposed to stay home, do the crossword, play Scrabble and drink cocoa and I told them so.
They thought that was very funny.
I WASN’T JOKING!
But then, neither were they. They’d spent the last thirty-five years bringing up their family and now they were seriously intent on enjoying themselves. I was the only fly in the ointment. Twenty-two years old, still living at home. Still dating the boy next door. With no sign of a wedding any time soon.
Worse was to come.
I’d assumed they’d go on their extended holiday happy in the knowledge that I’d be there to take care of things while they were away. And the up side was that, with the house to myself, I’d have a real opportunity to move things along with Don. Get his mind out from under the bonnet of his car, away from his mother, and inject some physicality into our relationship.
I was getting desperate for some action while I was still young enough to enjoy it.
But my father’s successor had been looking for somewhere to rent while he and his family found a house in the district. The deal had been done before I’d even heard about it. I’d appealed to my mother, but she’d said it was nothing to do with her. And then—and here was an extraordinary coincidence—my boss (the one who played golf with my dad every Sunday morning) asked me if I’d consider a six-month secondment to the City. Working in a merchant bank. Honing my skills for the next step up the ladder. Promotion. Something I’d been avoiding for the last two years. Promotion meant moving.
But Maybridge was alive with the twanging of strings being pulled and, before I’d known it, my mother had been on the old girls’ network, finding me somewhere to live.
‘It’ll do you good to have a change of scene,’ she said, over my protests. ‘You’re stuck in a rut in Maybridge. Gone as far as you can at the local branch of the bank…’ Everything came in threes, and apparently ruts were no exception. ‘And Don takes you for granted. It will do you both good to stand back and look at where you’re going.’
I knew where I was going—I’d known since I was ten years old—but my mother had a look about her that warned me that any argument would be a waste of breath. An I-know-what’s-best-for-you look. An unexpectedly knowing look that suggested a little enforced separation might shake Don into action.
Nearly twenty-three years old and still a virgin, I was getting desperate for some action.
All this talk of ruts was, however, a bit hard to take from a woman who’d lived with the same man, in the same house, for nearly forty years.
Not that I was criticising her for that. It was what I wanted, too. A lifetime with one man, in one house, raising a family. Just like my mother.
And Don wanted the same thing. Well, obviously he didn’t want a man, he wanted me, he’d said so. He just wasn’t doing anything about making it happen. Perhaps my imminent departure would jolt him out of his complacency.
I’d found him in his garage working on the small vintage car he’d been restoring for what seemed like for ever, told him my news and held my breath.
‘London?’ he said, with that sweet, puzzled expression that made him look as innocent as a baby. Okay, he was innocent. And sweet. If he’d been anything else, I’d have been beating off other girls since he was old enough to shave. But he’d only ever had eyes for me. He pushed back his floppy blond fringe, leaving a smear of grease on his forehead, to look at me with concern. ‘What on earth will you do in London?’
No, no, no!
He was supposed to leap to his feet, wrap me in his arms and tell me that I wasn’t going anywhere without him.
‘Going for the promotion that’s due to me,’ I said, irrationally irritable. ‘Seeing the sights. Having some fun,’ I added, hoping to provoke a little possessiveness.
Why would he be possessive when I’d only ever had eyes for him?
Don frowned but not, apparently, at the thought of me having fun. ‘You mean you’re going for good?’ For one heart-stopping moment I thought I’d got through to him. That he’d finally realised that, unless he did something about it, I wouldn’t be around to read his mind and put the right spanner in his hand whenever he needed it.
My imagination ran momentarily wild with anticipation that he’d leap to his feet, wrap me…etc., etc.
‘Yes,’ I said. That wasn’t quite true, but if I were promoted I would have to move to a larger branch somewhere else. I should have done it a long time ago, but I was comfortable in my rut. Unlike my siblings, I didn’t have an adventurous bone in my body. I’d flown once and I’d been so frightened I’d been sick. Nothing would induce me to repeat the experience. Besides, I liked living at home. Next door to the boy next door.
‘But you’ve been working there since you left college,’ Don said.
His concern about me moving on from my present job was wearing a bit thin. He was supposed to be shocked that I was leaving him.
‘Maybe it’s time to move on,’ I said. And waited for him to do something to change my mind. Exclamations of heartbreak would be a start. Followed by a suggestion that we catch the next plane to Bali and get married right away. On a beach. In the moonlight.
Bali? What was I thinking of? I didn’t want to go to Bali. That would mean getting on a plane. Two planes if I wanted to come home.
All this talk of travelling must have gone to my head.
I needn’t have worried, however, because he did none of the above. Just did that thing with his fringe again, looking adorably helpless, so that I wanted to kiss him and tell him that I didn’t mean it. That I wasn’t going anywhere. I just about managed to restrain myself. ‘Oh, well, I suppose I should say congratulations.’ Then, ‘I’ll really miss you.’ That was marginally better, but my smile was a fraction too fast. ‘I’ll have more time to work on the car, though.’
Er, when? He already spent every spare moment cherishing tender loving care on its engine, bodywork, upholstery, when it was my bodywork that was crying out for a little of that TLC.
‘Great,’ I said. But through gritted teeth.
‘London?’ He repeated the word as if it were a strange and mythical place instead of a sprawling city a scant hour from Maybridge by train. ‘I’m sure you’ll have a terrific time.’
BUT I DON’T WANT TO GO!
My scream of frustration was silent, however. A girl had her pride.
But why couldn’t he see that I wasn’t looking for a terrific time? That what I wanted was for him to tell me to forget all about London, suggest I move in with him and his widowed mother while we looked for a flat we could share…
I didn’t bother to ask any of these questions out loud. I already knew the answer.
Mrs Cooper, a vapid hypochondriac who’d never recovered from the fact that her husband had decamped with his secretary, was always very sweet to my face. I had a strong suspicion, however, that beneath the saccharine exterior she hated me playing with Don just as much now as when he’d been a clever twelve-year-old and I’d distracted him from his homework. There was no way she’d want me so dangerously close to her precious son.
I was seriously tempted to strip off and seduce him, right there and then in the garage, just to spite her. But the floor was bare concrete, the temperature freezing and Don’s hands were covered with motor oil. Only an idiot—or a desperate woman—would remove her thermals under such unpromising circumstances. Okay, so I was desperate, but, short of experience as I was, I suspected that, shivering and blue with cold, I wasn’t going to light anyone’s fire.
‘I do rather envy you, to be honest,’ Don said, distracting me with an odd hint of longing in his voice. ‘All those museums…’
Museums? That was his idea of a terrific time? Sweet, trusting soul that he was, I could have hugged him. But his overalls were covered in oil, too. Of course if I’d been wearing that fluffy sweater I’d have made the sacrifice.
‘Actually,’ he said, with more animation than he’d shown all evening, ‘when you go to the Science Museum you might take a look at…’
The Science Museum? He thought my idea of a fantastic time was an afternoon at the Science Museum? I might take a turn around the V&A to look at the jewellery and fashions but…
‘Promise?’ he said.
Promise? Promise what? Oh, heck, I should have been listening. ‘Why don’t you come up and spend the weekend with me?’ I suggested, suddenly seeing the possibilities… ‘We could go together.’
He looked slightly uncomfortable and, concentrating on wiping his hands on a rag, he said, ‘I don’t think I could leave Mother on her own overnight. She suffers so with her nerves.’
So she did.
She managed to get through the day well enough, while he was at work. She saved up her attacks to coincide with any plans I had for Don. Which was why, on Friday, having waved my parents off on their great adventure, I had to haul my own case aboard the London train. He’d taken the afternoon off to drive me to the station, but his mother had had one of her ‘little turns’ just before we’d been due to leave.
I’d considered having a turn of my own. Flinging myself on the floor and drumming my heels on the hall carpet. But Don had looked so miserable that I’d told him to go back to his mother and wait for the doctor, while I called a taxi and put myself on the train.
As Maybridge disappeared into the icy rain of a November afternoon I settled down with a cheese and pickle sandwich and a comfortingly large hot chocolate drink and, since I had an hour to fill, I took out the magazine.
‘Are You a Tiger or a Kitten?’ screamed at me from a cover flash. I didn’t need a quiz to answer that one. I was nearly twenty-three years old, I had a mother who was still treating me like a child and a boyfriend who’d apparently mislaid his libido.
I was a kitten, right?
Wrong.
Having worked my way through the multiple-choice questions, I discovered that I’d been wildly optimistic.
I was a mouse. Or maybe an ostrich.
That, according to the quiz, was why I was sitting on a train for London when I wanted to stay in Maybridge.
That was why my boyfriend put his mother first. (And because he was sweet and kind and she was a manipulative old witch.) Why I was going to spend Christmas pulling crackers with Great-Aunt Alice instead of getting pulled by Don.
I was too easygoing. Too undemanding. My expectations were so low, they barely registered. I picked up my cheese sandwich and then put it down again quickly. Cheese. A mouse would choose a cheese sandwich.
I should have chosen the fashionable roast vegetables in sun dried tomato bread. But, mouse that I was, I loved cheese.
I should be wearing designer label jeans with high heels, instead of an old pair that had once belonged to the last of my brothers to leave home—shortened to fit my pathetically short legs—with a pair of cheap trainers I’d bought from the market. (I was saving up to get married, okay?)
I should have my nails professionally manicured. I should at least have painted them with something more exciting than the pale pink nail polish I’d borrowed from my mother.
I might never have wanted to be a tiger, but surely I should at least aspire to be a kitten?
Unfortunately any attempt to change my character would only raise a patronising smile in Maybridge. I’d lived there all my life. Who would take me seriously if I changed into a scarlet-nailed temptress overnight?
But it occurred to me that in London, where no one knew me, I could be whatever I chose. I had to face facts. Being mouse-like, I hadn’t been able to untie Don from his mother’s apron strings and fix him to mine.
Maybe my mother—tough though it was to admit this—was right. Maybe a break would do us both good. Don had six months to experience life without me at his side to hand him a wrench before he’d even asked for it.
And I had six months to put on some gloss, put an edge on my character, so that when I went back to Maybridge Don would be down that aisle before he—or his mother—knew what had hit him.
As the train arrived in Paddington I stuffed the magazine into my shoulder bag for further study and grabbed my bulging suitcase from the rack.
New job. New life. New clothes. I was in London and I was going to make the most of it.
I didn’t actually growl as I joined the crowds heading for the underground, but I was beginning to take to the idea of being a tiger.
CHAPTER TWO
It’s the rush hour and raining. You hail the same taxi as a tall, dark and handsome stranger and he suggests sharing. Do you:
a. think it’s your birthday, flirt like mad until you reach your destination, then as you leave the cab hand him your phone number with a look that says ‘Call me…’?
b. remind yourself that your mother would not approve, but it is raining and he doesn’t look like a serial killer. What could be the harm?
c. tell him to get lost and leave him standing on the pavement?
d. let him take the taxi and wait for another one?
e. walk?
HAVING battled with the intricacies of the underground system, only going in the wrong direction twice, I finally emerged into the light of day. When I say light of day, I’m using poetic licence. What actually confronted me was the dark of a wet November evening.
And when I say wet, I do mean wet. No poet needed. The rain, miserable icy drizzle that had perfectly matched my mood when I’d left home, had intensified to the consistency of stair-rods.
In the country it would have been quite dark. But this was London where the neon never set; excitingly opulent shop windows and the rainbow colours of a million Christmas lights were reflected in the wet street, cutting through the gathering gloom.
And there were people, hundreds and hundreds of people, all with somewhere to go and in a hurry to get there.
I stood in the entrance to the underground, A-Z in hand, trying to orientate myself as impatient travellers pushed past me. On paper, it didn’t seem far to Sophie and Kate Harrington’s flat, but I was well aware that distance, on paper, could be deceiving. And my problems with north and south on the underground system had seriously undermined any confidence in my ability to map read. A taxi seemed like a wise investment and as I glanced up I spotted the yellow light on a cruising black cab.
I’d never hailed a taxi before—in Maybridge taxis didn’t cruise for custom, you had to telephone for one—but I knew how to do it. In theory. I’d seen people do it on television often enough. You stood on the kerb, raised your hand and yelled ‘Taxi!’…
I’d never make it to the kerb before it passed so I raised my hand and waved hopefully, but, realising that my self-consciously ladylike rendition of ‘Taxi!’ didn’t stand a chance of being heard over the noise of traffic, I tried again, this time yelling loud enough to wake the dead. I didn’t care. It had worked! The driver was heading for the kerb, pulling up a few yards ahead of me.
Wow! Who was the mouse now? I thought smugly as I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and, towing it after me, I cut recklessly through the crowds who were charging along, heads collectively down against the rain. Before I got to the kerb, however, someone had already opened the taxi door and was closing his umbrella prior to boarding.
‘Hey, you! That’s mine!’ I declared, uncharacteristically tiger-like in my defence of my first London taxi, despite the fact that my adversary towered above me.
The black silk umbrella he was holding collapsed in a shower of rainwater, most of which went over me, and the taxi thief glanced at me with every indication of impatience.
‘On the contrary, I hailed it before you even saw it,’ he said, giving me the briefest of glances. Brief was apparently all it took. After a moment’s astonished gaze, he muttered something beneath his breath that I didn’t quite catch—but didn’t for a moment believe was complimentary—and, with a look of resignation that suggested he was being a fool to himself, he stood back and gestured at the open door. ‘Take it. Before you drown.’
Oh, no. This was bad. I could be mad at a man who nicked my cab, but I couldn’t take it if it was rightfully his, even if my need was clearly the greater.
He did, after all, have an umbrella.
But I was already so wet that no amount of rain would make any difference. As I dithered on the kerb, he was rapidly getting the same way. But it had only taken a moment’s reflection, a pause long enough for my brain to override my mouth, for me to realise that I had in fact seen him standing at the edge of the pavement in that moment when I’d looked up from the A-Z. That my own efforts to attract the driver’s attention from the back of the pavement had gone unheeded. Feeling very stupid, the tiger in me morphed back into mouse.
‘No, really,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry…’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ He seized the handle of my suitcase, crammed with everything I might need for the next six months and weighing a ton, and tossed it into the cab without noticeable effort. ‘Stop wittering and get in.’
‘Would one of you get in?’ the driver demanded testily. ‘I’ve got a living to make.’
‘Maybe we could share,’ I said, scrambling in after my suitcase. My irritable knight errant paused in the act of closing the door behind me. ‘I’m not going far and you could…um…we could…’ He waited for me to finish. ‘At least you’d be in the dry.’
Oh, heck. This wasn’t like the quiz at all. I wasn’t supposed to do the asking. But then the quiz wasn’t real life.
In my real life I didn’t offer to share taxis with tall, dark and handsome strangers. In my real life Friday evenings were spent handing Don his spanners as he talked endlessly about the intricacies of the internal combustion engine; a well-drilled theatre nurse to his mechanical surgeon. Comfortable. Familiar. Safe. Nothing to get the heart racing. Not the way mine was racing now.
‘Where are you going?’
I told him and he raised his brows a fraction.
‘Is that on your way?’ I asked.
After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded, told the driver where to go, then climbed in and pulled down the jump seat opposite me, sitting sideways, his legs stretched across the width of the cab, so that his knees and feet wouldn’t intrude on my space.
He had the biggest feet I’d ever seen and as I stared at them I found myself wondering if it was true about the size of a man’s feet indicating the size of, well, other extremities…
‘You’re new in London aren’t you?’ he said, and I looked up. The corner of his mouth had kinked up in a knowing smile and I blushed, certain that he could read my mind.
‘Just this minute arrived.’ There was no point in pretending otherwise. I’d dressed for warmth and comfort rather than style. With nothing more glamorous than baby cream on my face—I’d chewed off my lipstick in the tussle with the underground—and my hair neon-red candyfloss from the damp, I was never going to pass as a sophisticated City-girl. ‘I suppose the suitcase is a dead giveaway,’ I said, wishing I’d taken a lot more trouble over my appearance.
A tiger, according to my magazine, would always leave the house prepared to meet the man of her dreams. But how often did that happen? Besides, I’d left the man of my dreams in Maybridge. Hadn’t I?
‘And the A-Z,’ I added, stuffing it into my shoulder bag, alongside the treacherous magazine.
‘Not the suitcase,’ he replied. ‘It was your willingness to surrender a taxi at this time of day that betrayed you. You won’t do it twice.’
‘I won’t?’
‘They’re rarer than hen’s teeth.’
Hen’s teeth? ‘Are they rare?’ I asked, confused. It seemed unlikely. Hens weren’t on any endangered list…
‘I’ve never seen one.’ Oh, stocking tops! The rain was dripping from my hair and trickling icily down the back of my neck. I suspected that it had seeped right into my brain. ‘But then I’ve never felt any desire to look into a hen’s beak,’ he added.
‘No one ever does,’ I replied. ‘Big mistake.’ And he was kind enough to smile, giving me ample opportunity to see for myself that his own teeth left nothing to be desired.
In the dark and wet of the pavement I hadn’t noticed much more than the fact that my ‘tall, dark stranger’ was the requisite ‘tall’. Of course, when describing yourself as one point six metres was pure vanity, everyone seemed tall. But he was really, really tall. Several inches taller than Don, who was my personal yardstick for tall.
And his voice. I’d noticed that, too.
Low and gravelly, it was the voice of a man you just knew it wouldn’t be wise to mess with. Yet his impatience was softened by velvet undertones. Sort of like Sean Connery, but without the Scottish accent.
Now I was sitting opposite him I could see that the ‘dark’ bit fitted him, too. I sat mesmerised as a drop of rainwater gathered and slid down the jet curve of an untidy curl before dropping into the turned-up collar of his overcoat. And I shivered.
Tall and dark. His skin so deeply tanned that he looked Italian, or possibly Greek.
But he struck out on handsome.
There was nothing smooth or playboy pretty about his features. His cheekbones were too prominent, his nose less than straight and there was a jagged scar just above his right eyebrow, giving the overall impression of a man who met life head-on and occasionally came off worst.
That was okay. There was something about a cliché that was so off-putting. Two out of three was just about right. Tall, dark and dangerous was more like it, because his eyes more than made up for any lack of symmetry. They were sea-green, deep enough to drown in and left me with the heart-racing impression that until now I might have been dreaming in sepia.
‘Have you come far?’ he asked, in an attempt to engage me in conversation. Presumably to stop me from staring.
I was jerked back to reality. ‘Oh…um …no. Not really. From Maybridge. It’s near…er…’ I struggled for a coherent response. I was used to having to explain exactly where Maybridge was. People constantly confused it with Maidenhead, Maidstone and a dozen other towns that began with the same sound, but my mind refused to co-operate.
‘I know where Maybridge is,’ he said, rescuing me from my pitiful lapse of memory. ‘I have friends who live in Upper Haughton.’
‘Upper Haughton!’ I exclaimed, clutching at geographical straws. Upper Haughton was a picture-perfect village a few miles outside Maybridge that had outgrown its agricultural past and was now the province of the seriously rich. ‘Yes, that’s it. It’s near Upper Haughton.’
The mouse in me wanted to groan, bury my face in my hands. Wanted to go back five minutes so that I could keep my big mouth shut and let him steal my taxi. His taxi.
But the tiger in me wanted to write my name and telephone number on a card and murmur ‘call me’ in a sultry voice. Since he must by now believe I was at least one sandwich short of a picnic, it was perhaps fortunate that I didn’t have a card handy and was thus saved the embarrassment of making a total fool of myself.
Instead, I glanced at my wrist-watch, not because I wanted to know the time—I had no pressing engagement—but to avoid looking into his eyes again.
‘We’re nearly there,’ he said. Then, ‘Are you staying long? In London.’
‘Six months,’ I said. ‘My parents are travelling…Australia, South Africa, America…and they decided to let the house…’ I was ‘wittering’ again and, remembering his impatience, stopped myself. ‘So here I am.’
‘While the cat’s away?’ he suggested, with another of those knowing smiles.
Clearly he hadn’t had any trouble spotting that I was a mouse. Fortunately, the taxi swept up to the front of a stunningly beautiful riverside apartment building, terraced in sweeping lines and lit up like an ocean liner, and I was saved the necessity of answering him. For a moment I sat open-mouthed at the sight while, apparently impatient to be rid of me, my companion opened the door and stepped out, lifting my case onto the footpath. Then, gentleman that he was, he opened his umbrella and handed it to me as I followed him, before turning to speak to the driver while I dug out my purse and found a five pound note.
‘Put that away,’ he said as I offered it.
‘No, really, I insist,’ I said. I couldn’t let him pay my fare. He didn’t bother to argue. He just closed the taxi door, picked up my suitcase and headed for the front door, leaving me with a five pound note in one hand and his umbrella in the other. The taxi drove off.
‘Hey, wait…’ I wasn’t sure whether I was shouting at the driver, who clearly hadn’t realised he still had a fare, or Mr Tall, Dark and Dangerous himself.
I’d been warned about the security system on the front door. You had to have a smart card, or ring the bell of the person you were visiting so that they could let you into the building. TDD bypassed the system by catching the door as someone left the building, and was now holding it open. Standing in the entrance. Waiting for me to join him.
He wasn’t going anywhere, I realised.
‘While the cat’s away…’ he’d said.
And my memory instantly filled in the blank. ‘The mouse will play.’
And I hadn’t denied it.
Did he think I couldn’t wait to get started? Expect to be invited in? Offered…and I swallowed hard…coffee? Had my invitation to share the taxi been completely misunderstood?
I realised just how rash I’d been. Naïve. Worse…just plain stupid.
I’d allowed this man whom I’d never met before, whose name I didn’t even know, to give the driver the address. I hadn’t heard what he’d said and, too late, it occurred to me that I could be anywhere.
And who’d miss me?
I’d actually told him that my parents were on the other side of the world, for heaven’s sake!
How long would it be before Sophie and Kate Harrington raised the alarm when I didn’t arrive? When I’d spoken to Sophie, she hadn’t been exactly enthusiastic about me moving in. In fact I’d got the distinct impression that she, like me, had had her arm painfully twisted.
She certainly wouldn’t be dialling the emergency services today. Or tomorrow. Not until Don called, anyway…
Anticipation of his agonised realisation that I might not even have got on the train, that my disappearance might be entirely his fault for not seeing me off, made me feel momentarily happier.
The pleasure was short-lived, however, swamped by instant recall of a lifetime of my mother’s awful warnings about the inadvisability of taking lifts from strangers. And with that thought came relief.
My mother, even from thirty thousand feet, came to my rescue as, pushing the five-pound note into my jacket pocket, I gripped my attack alarm. It was just a small thing on a keyring and I’m ashamed to say that I’d laughed when she’d given it to me, made me promise I’d carry it with me while I was in London. But, as she’d pointed out, I’d need a new keyring so it might as well be this one…
I sent a belated—and silent—thank-you heaven-ward before forcing my mouth into an approximation of a smile and looking up at the man I’d decided was tall, dark and dangerous. As if that were a good thing.
‘You really didn’t have to see me right to the door,’ I said, trying on a laugh for size. It wasn’t convincing.
‘I wouldn’t,’ he assured me, ‘if I didn’t live in the apartment next door to you.’
‘Next door?’ He lived in the same block? Next door? Relief surged through me and I very nearly laughed.
‘Shall we get inside?’ he said coolly. He’d clearly cottoned on to my unease and was offended. ‘If you’ll just close the umbrella—’
In my hurry to comply, I yanked my hand out of my pocket and the keyring alarm flew out with it.
I made a wild grab for it and as my fingers closed over it I felt the tiny switch shift. I said one heartfelt word. Fortunately, it was obliterated by a banshee wail that my mother probably heard halfway to Australia.
Startled by the blast of sound, I let go of the umbrella, which, caught by a gust of wind, bowled away across the entrance and towards the road. TDD—his patience tried beyond endurance—swore briefly and let my suitcase drop as he lunged after it. It was too much for the over-stressed zip and the case burst open in a shower of underwear. Plain, white, comfortable underwear. The kind you’d never admit to wearing. He froze, transfixed by the horror of the moment, and the world seemed to stand still, catch its breath.
Then reality rushed back in full colour. With surround sound.
The rain, the piercing, mind-deadening noise of the alarm, the red-hot embarrassment that was right off any scale yet invented.
I was gripping the keyring in my fist, as if I could somehow contain the noise. There was a trick to switching it off—otherwise any attacker could do it. But I was beyond rational thought.
TDD’s mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying and finally he grabbed my wrist, prised open my fingers and dropped the wretched thing on the footpath. Then he put his heel on it and ground it flat. It seemed to take for ever before the sound finally died.
The silence, if anything, was worse.
‘Thank you,’ I said when the feeling came back to my ears, but my voice came out as little more than a squeak. A mouse squeak and heaven alone knew that at that moment I wished I were a real mouse—one with a hole to disappear down.
‘Wait here,’ he said, and the chill factor in his voice turned the gravel into crushed ice. Well, it wouldn’t take a genius to work out why I was holding an attack alarm. He’d surrendered his taxi to me, refused my share of the fare, and I’d reacted to his kindness as if he were some kind of monster.
As my abused knight errant disappeared into the darkness in search of his umbrella, I knew that I should go after him, help him track it down. I told myself he’d probably prefer it if I didn’t. That was what the ‘wait here’ had been all about. A keep-your-distance-before-you-do-any-more-damage command. Besides, I could hardly leave my knickers scattered across the entrance to this unbelievably grand block of flats.
I captured a pair that was about to blow away and stuffed it into my pocket. I knew I should wait for his return, apologise abjectly, offer to pay for any repairs. After all that wasn’t any old cheap-and-cheerful bumbershoot. The kind that it didn’t matter much if you left it on the bus. The kind I regularly left on buses.
Gathering the rest of my scattered belongings, I reasoned that waiting was not necessary. He lived next door. I could put a note through his letterbox later. I sincerely believed that when he’d had a moment to think, calm down, he’d prefer that.
Which was why I stuffed my clothes back into the case as fast as I could before sprinting for the lift.
Sophie Harrington took her time about opening the door. I stood there with my case gripped under both my arms to prevent the contents falling out, wishing she’d hurry up.
I’d promised myself while I’d been travelling up in the lift that next time I met my new next-door neighbour I’d be dressed tidily, with my hair and my mouth under control. I didn’t expect him to be impressed, but hoped he’d realise I wasn’t the complete idiot he’d—with good reason—thought me.
Heck, even I thought I was an idiot. And I knew better.
But if Sophie didn’t hurry up, I’d still be standing in the hall when he reached the top floor.
It wasn’t an appealing prospect and I hitched up my suitcase and rang the bell again. The door was instantly flung open by a girl in a bathrobe and a bad mood.
Oh, good start.
Having gravely offended the next door neighbour, I’d now got my new flatmate out of the shower.
And if I hadn’t already known just how bad I looked—the lift had mirrored walls—her expression would have left me in no doubt.
‘You must be Philly Gresham,’ she said, with a heaven-help-us sigh. ‘I’m Sophie Harrington. You’d better come in.’
‘Thanks.’ I stepped into the hall, still clinging to my suitcase and unwilling to put it down. The floor was pale polished hardwood and I didn’t want to make a mess. ‘I’ve had a bit of an accident,’ I said, unnecessarily. But I felt someone had to fill that huge, unwelcoming silence. ‘The zip broke.’
Sophie’s older sister, Kate, appeared behind her and, taking one look at me, said, ‘Good grief, did you swim here?’ Then, kinder, she said, ‘I’ll show you your room. You can dump that and have a hot shower while Sophie makes a pot of tea. You look as if you could do with a cup.’
That had to be the understatement of the year.
Sophie didn’t look as if making a pot of tea had been part of her immediate plans, but after another sigh—just to reinforce the message—she flounced off.
‘Take no notice of my little sister,’ Kate said as she led the way. ‘She had other plans for your room. She’ll get over it.’
‘Oh?’ I said politely, imagining a study, or a work-room.
‘There’s a stunning new man at work. He’s just moved down from Aberdeen and he’s looking for somewhere to live. She’d planned to seduce him with low-rent accommodation.’ She glanced back at me, her expression solemn, but her eyes danced with humour. ‘A mistake, don’t you think? Suppose he moved in and then brought home a succession of equally stunning girls?’
‘Nothing but trouble,’ I agreed, with equal solemnity.
We exchanged a look that suggested that, two years older than Sophie, we were both too old, too wise to ever do anything that stupid and I decided that, while the jury was out on Sophie, I was going to like Kate.
‘I was quite relieved when Aunt Cora phoned and asked if we could put you up, to be honest. Sophie threw a tantrum but she knows that when Aunt Cora commands…’ She obviously thought I knew what she was talking about.
‘Aunt Cora?’
‘My mother’s sister. This is her flat. A small part of the spoils of a very lucrative divorce settlement. Happily she prefers to live in France so we get to house-sit.’
‘At a price.’
‘We just pay the expenses, which admittedly are not low…’ Then, ‘Oh, you mean you.’ And she laughed. ‘Don’t worry about it. Sophie’ll come round.’ She stopped. ‘This is your room.’
And she opened a door to the kind of bedroom I’d only ever seen in lifestyle articles in the Sunday supplements. A blond wood floor, taupe walls, a low double bed with real blankets and the bed-linen was just that. Linen. It was spare, stylish and, in comparison with my single-bedded room at home with its floral wallpaper, shelves full of favourite childhood books and menagerie of stuffed animals—very grown up.
‘It’s lovely,’ I said. Still unwilling to put down my suitcase and spoil the perfection.
‘It looks too much like a department store-room setting for my taste. It needs living in.’ She glanced at me, standing practically to attention, afraid to touch anything, and grinned. ‘Relax, Philly. Don’t be afraid to muss it up and make yourself at home.’ She crossed the room and threw open another door. ‘You’ve got an en suite shower. And this,’ she said, ignoring the reality of my ruined suitcase, ‘is a walk-in wardrobe.’
It didn’t take a theoretical physicist to work out that I didn’t need a walk-in anything. A small cupboard would accommodate my limited wardrobe with space left over. But what with a uniform for work and overalls for the garage—neither of which was needed in London—I was rather short of clothes. My priority had been saving up for a deposit on a home of my own so that when Don eventually realised that there was more to life than old cars there’d be nothing to stop us. I was going to assuage my misery by blowing some of it on some serious working clothes. If I wasn’t going to have a personal life for the next six months, I might as well do my career some good.
‘Do you want to give me your jacket? I’ll hang it up to dry.’
It occurred to me that people who lived in this kind of apartment block couldn’t hang out their washing on a line in the back garden. ‘Is there a launderette nearby? Some of my…um…clothes got a bit muddy.’
‘Possibly, but why go out in the rain when we’ve got everything you need right here? Washer, dryer and the finest steam iron a divorce settlement can buy.’
A dryer? I quashed the thought that my mother wouldn’t approve and grinned. ‘Thanks, Kate.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she said. ‘Now I’d better go and make sure that my sulky little sister isn’t lacing your tea with something unpleasant. Don’t stand on ceremony. A bathrobe is as formal as it gets around here at this time on a Friday.’ And she grinned. ‘Just follow the sound of Sophie’s teeth gnashing when you’re ready.’
CHAPTER THREE
It’s dark and raining. Your room-mates have gone out and you’re on your own in a strange flat. As you turn on the cooker to prepare some absolutely vital comfort food you blow the fuses. Do you:
a. remember that there’s a pub on the corner? You can get something to eat there and find a bloke who knows how to fix a fuse. Excellent.
b. go next door for help? The guy who lives there never leaves the house in daylight, but, hey, it’s dark, so that’s not a problem.
c. ring the emergency services and cry?
d. keep a torch and spare fuse wire by the fuse-box? You fix the fuse yourself.
e. just cry?
‘FEELING better?’
Kate was on her own in the kitchen and waved in the direction of the teapot, indicating that I should help myself.
‘Much,’ I said, although I felt a little self-conscious in my aged bathrobe, with my hair wrapped in one of the thick soft towels that had been left for me. I’d never shared a flat with girls my own age before but I had friends who were quick to tell me that it was a minefield.
Rows over who’d taken the last of the milk, or bread. Rows over telephone bills. And worst of all, rows over men. At least that wouldn’t be a problem. I had enough trouble holding my own man’s attention against the incomparable glamour of a carburettor, let alone attracting any attention from any of theirs.
Kate seemed friendly enough but I didn’t want her to think I was freeloading. ‘I need to go shopping, stock up on the essentials, if you’ll point me in the direction of the nearest supermarket,’ I said as I filled a cup.
‘Don’t worry tonight. So long as you don’t eat Sophie’s cottage cheese you’ll be fine.’
‘No problem,’ I said, with feeling, and we both grinned.
‘Do you know anyone in London, Philly?’
I shook my head. Then said, ‘Well…’ Kate waited. ‘I met the man who lives next door. We hailed the same taxi and since we were going in the same direction it seemed logical to share. Not that I knew he lived next door then, of course.’
Kate looked surprised. Actually it did seem pretty unlikely, but it wasn’t the coincidence that bothered her. ‘You got into a taxi with a man you didn’t know?’
I was still feeling a little bit wobbly about that myself.
‘It was raining. And he was prepared to let me take it. He was really, very…um…’ On the point of saying kind, I was assailed by a vivid recollection of impatience barely held in check behind fathoms-deep sea-green eyes. Of his heel grinding my attack alarm in the pavement. Of his sharp ‘wait here’. And my mouth dried on ‘kind’.
‘Yes?’
‘Actually, I owe him an apology.’ I swallowed. ‘And probably a new umbrella.’ Kate’s brows quirked upwards. ‘It’s a long story.’
‘Then it’s one that’ll have to keep. I’ve got a date with a totally gorgeous barrister. I’d have cancelled when I realised you would be arriving today, but I have long-term plans for this one and I’m not risking him out alone on Friday night.’ And she grinned as she pushed herself off her stool. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not leaving you on your own with Sophie. She’s going to a party. I would have asked her to take you but, in her present mood, I couldn’t positively guarantee you’d have a good time.’
‘No,’ I said. Relieved. The thought of going to a party, being forced into the company of a roomful of strangers, with or without Sophie, was not appealing.
And when, an hour or so later, Sophie drifted into the kitchen on high, high heels, ethereal in silvery chiffon, a fairy dusting of glitter across her shoulders, her white-blonde hair a mass of tiny waves, the relief intensified.
If I’d walked into a room alongside her fragile beauty, I’d have looked not just like a mouse, but a well-fed country mouse.
‘Will you be all right on your own?’ Kate asked, following her, equally stunning in the kind of simple black dress that didn’t come from any store that had a branch in Maybridge High Street. ‘There’s a pile of videos if there’s nothing on television you fancy and a list of fast-food outlets that deliver by the phone.’ And she grinned. ‘We don’t cook if we can help it.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said, trying not to dwell on the fact that, for the first time in as long as I could remember on a Friday night, Don would not be bounding up to my front door ready to fall in with whatever I’d planned for the evening. Even if it did involve sitting through a chick-flick. I tried not to picture him down the pub with his car-crazy mates—no doubt encouraged by his miraculously restored mother not to ‘sit at home and brood’. Instead I gestured ironically in the direction of the washing machine where my knickers were going through the rinse cycle. ‘I’ve got plenty to do.’
Kate laughed. ‘Whatever turns you on,’ she said as the bell rang from the front entrance.
‘Come on, Kate, that’ll be the taxi,’ Sophie said, with a pitying glance in my direction before she went to let the driver know they were on their way.
But Kate hesitated, turned back, the slightest frown creasing her lovely forehead. ‘Was it Gorgeous George or Wee Willy?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Did you share a taxi with George or Willy?’
On the point of explaining that we hadn’t actually exchanged names, I realised how lame that sounded. On the other hand, while neither name seemed to suit my unfortunate Galahad, no one in their right mind would have referred to him as Wee Willy…
‘Gorgeous George?’ I repeated. A question, rather than an answer.
‘Tall, dark—’
‘That’s the one,’ I said.
‘And very, very gay.’
‘Gay?’
She gave me an old-fashioned look that suggested I might be even more of a hick than I looked. ‘You didn’t realise?’
Gay? He was gay?
No, I hadn’t realised. I’d been too busy falling into his hypnotic green eyes…
I pulled myself together, managed a shrug. ‘I wasn’t paying that much attention,’ I said. ‘And he was more interested in chasing his umbrella. In fact I should make sure he found it. Which side does he live on?’
Not that I intended to do more than put my apology—along with an offer to pay for repairs or a replacement—in writing and slip it beneath his door. He would undoubtedly take the hint and respond in kind. After that, if we ever passed in the hall, neither of us would have to do more than nod, which would be a relief all round, I told myself.
‘Out of the door, turn right. End of the hall. Number seventy-two.’ Then she grinned and said, ‘Don’t wait up.’
‘Gorgeous George?’ I repeated as the door banged shut behind Kate and Sophie. Trying to get my head round the idea. Trying to work out quite why my heart was sinking like a stone.
Clearly it had nothing to do with the man who lived next door. It had to be because I was alone on a Friday night in a city where I had no friends. My parents were thirty thousand feet above terra firma in another time zone and the man in my life, if he wasn’t cosied up with his beloved car, was down the pub having a good time without me.
So I did what I always did when I felt down. I opened the fridge.
What I needed—and urgently—was food. But Sophie could relax; her cottage cheese was safe from me. I wanted comfort food.
A bacon and egg sandwich. Or sausages. Something warm, and satisfying and packed with heart-clogging cholesterol. If it was clogged, it wouldn’t feel so empty.
But no such luck. The fridge was a fat-free zone.
Then I opened the dairy drawer and hit the jackpot. Either Sophie had a secret vice, or Kate was a girl after my own heart.
There was a pack of expensive, unsalted butter—the kind that tasted like cream spread on bread—and a great big wedge of farmhouse Cheddar cheese from a shop near Covent Garden that I’d read about in the food section of the Sunday paper. I broke a piece off to taste. And drooled.
I passed on the butter. I didn’t need butter. Cheese on toast would do very nicely.
It wouldn’t be a hardship to take a trip to Covent Garden in the morning and replace it. I could buy my own supply at the same time and take a look around. Cheered at the idea, I turned on the grill and put the bread to toast on one side. Then I hunted through the cupboards until I found some chilli powder.
Excellent.
It was past its sell-by date—well, Kate had said they didn’t cook. From the state of the cupboards, she did not exaggerate. But I wasn’t going to get food poisoning from geriatric spice. I’d just have to use more.
I turned back to the stove to check the toast, but the grill hadn’t come on and, realising that the cooker was turned off at the main switch, I reached across the worktop and flipped it down.
Several things happened at once.
There was a blue flash, a loud bang and everything went dark. Then I screamed.
It was nothing really over the top as screams went.
It was loud, but nowhere near the ear-rending decibels expected of the heroine in a low-budget horror movie. I was startled—knee-tremblingly, heart-poundingly startled. Not scared witless.
It was also pointless since there was no one around to respond with sympathy for my plight.
I was on my own. Totally on my own. For the first time in my life, there wasn’t a soul I could call on for help. I stood there in total darkness, gripping the work surface as if my life depended on it, while my heart gradually slowed to its normal pace and I made a very determined effort not to feel sorry for myself.
I’d blown a fuse. It wasn’t the end of the world.
It just felt like it.
Beyond the windows, on the far side of the river, the lights of London twinkled back at me, mockingly. They knew I was out of my depth.
Back home all I’d have to do was pick up the phone and call Don. Not that I’d need him to mend the fuse, but his presence would have been a comfort. And how often did I have the perfect excuse to have him alone with me in a totally empty house? A dark empty house.
His mother might suspect me of planning to take unfair advantage of her precious son, but she wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it. Not in an emergency. Not without showing her true colours. And she was too clever for that.
But I wasn’t in Maybridge and Don didn’t live next door.
Next door lived a man who’d seen my underwear. Which was more than Don had managed in the best part of thirteen years.
That it was plain, serviceable, ordinary underwear should have made it marginally less embarrassing, but somehow the fact that he knew I wore boring knickers only made things worse.
Why, I had no idea. He was gay. He wasn’t in the slightest bit interested in my underwear, except perhaps aesthetically.
Why was I even thinking about him?
I didn’t need anybody. I could mend a fuse. All I had to do was find the fuse box.
The cloak cupboard by the door was the most likely place and, keeping hold of the work surfaces, I edged around the kitchen until I found the door. Then, feeling my way along the wall, I set off in what I hoped was the direction of the front door.
It would have been easier if there had been some light. At home we kept candles and matches under the kitchen sink for ‘emergencies’. I might have teased my mother about her obsession with ‘emergencies’, but, while I wasn’t about to admit that I really, really wanted her right now, in the thick blackness of the windowless hall I’d have warmly welcomed a little of her forward planning.
What I got was a shin-height table and the expensive sound of breaking porcelain as I flailed wildly to save myself from falling.
It had to be expensive. Everything about this flat was expensive, from its location to its smallest fitting. I was lucky to be living here, even temporarily, I knew—my mother had told me so. At that precise moment I didn’t feel lucky. I felt like screaming again.
I didn’t. Instead I rubbed my painful shins and considered my options.
I could pack and leave before Sophie and Kate got home.
I could hide the broken crocks—along with the evidence of my attempts at cooking—in my suitcase, go to bed and act surprised in the morning when nothing worked.
I could cry.
Actually, I was closer to tears than at any time since my grandmother had died. But all tears did was make your eyes and nose red, so I resisted the urge to sit on the horrible table and bawl my eyes out. Instead, I edged my way carefully past the broken china and made it to the cloak cupboard without further mishap.
I’d thought it was dark in the hall. In the cupboard it was black.
At home—and at this point I was beginning to realise that I’d seriously underrated my mother—there would have been a torch handily placed on top of the fuse-box, along with spare fuse wire.
‘Mum,’ I said, lifting my face in the darkness so that she could hear me better. ‘I swear I’ll never call you a fussy old bat ever again.’ Not that I ever had—well, not to her face. ‘I’ll wear warm underwear without being nagged, replace my attack alarm first thing tomorrow and never, ever go out without a clean handkerchief…just, please, please, let there be a torch with the fuse box.’ I groped in the darkness.
There was no torch.
I was released from the warm underwear promise—not that it mattered because the way my life was going no one was ever going to see it in situ—but I was still in the dark. Fortunately, the cloak cupboard was right by the front door and it occurred to me that, since I was now living in a luxury apartment, I could borrow some light from the well-lit communal hallway.
Pleased with myself, I opened the door and screamed again—this time with no holds barred—as a tall figure, silhouetted in black against the light, reached out for me.
Sound-blasted back by my scream, he retreated into the light and I belatedly recognised the neighbour I least wanted to meet. And he hadn’t been reaching out to grab my throat as my lurid imagination had suggested, but to ring the doorbell.
It was the first time I’d seen him in full light and there was nothing about him to suggest that my earlier assessment of him had been wrong. He was tall, he was dark. And the way my heart was pumping confirmed that he was, without doubt, dangerous. To my equilibrium, if nothing else.
But what really held my attention was the large flat carton balanced on the palm of his hand. He might be dangerous but he’d got pizza and my stomach—anticipating the promised cheese on toast—responded with an excited gurgle.
‘Yes?’ I demanded, to cover my embarrassment.
‘You screamed,’ he said.
‘You scared me,’ I snapped back as, for the second time in as many minutes, I waited for my heart to steady. Then, ‘What do you want?’
‘Not just now when you opened the door,’ he said, with the careful speech of a man who believed he was dealing with an idiot. ‘You screamed a minute or two ago—’
A minute or two? It seemed as if I’d been in the dark for hours…
‘—and since I saw your friends go out, I thought I’d better make sure you’re not just watching a scary video alone in the dark.’
‘Oh,’ I said. It was just as well I wasn’t trying to impress this man. He clearly thought I was a total ditz. ‘Sorry. I didn’t realise the walls were so thin.’
‘They’re not.’ He said this with the authority of a man who knew. ‘I was at my door when you—’
He seemed reluctant to use the word again and I could scarcely blame him. ‘Screamed,’ I said, rescuing him. ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you. The fuses blew. That’s all.’ All! ‘I was just going to fix them.’
‘You know how?’ he said, without bothering to disguise his disbelief.
I tried to remember that he was being kind. A good neighbour. That he could have just shut his door. ‘They teach girls stuff like that in school these days,’ I assured him.
‘Really?’ He seemed unimpressed but he didn’t argue. Didn’t do that ‘I’m a big clever man and you’re just a girl’ thing that most men did. Instead he said, ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it.’ Which should have been more gratifying than it was. He took a step in the direction of his own front door, then hesitated, turned back. ‘You’ve got spare fuse wire?’
There had been none where I’d have expected it to be and it occurred to me that I might yet be grateful for his ‘good neighbour’ act.
‘I shouldn’t think so for a minute,’ I said. Keeping my smile to myself.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve only seen your flatmates from a distance. Very decorative, but they didn’t strike me as the practical type.’
I considered the fragile beauty of Sophie, the cool sophistication of Kate. ‘You may be right,’ I said. Women who looked like that would never need to be practical.
‘Why don’t you see if you can find the blown fuse while I fetch some wire?’ he suggested.
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Liz Fielding
Praise for RITA
Award-winning author LIZ FIELDING
About The Bride, the Baby and the Best Man:
“A wonderful story with emotionally driven characters, cracking scenes and a fantastic plot twist.”
—Romantic Times
About And Mother Makes Three:
“Ms. Fielding continues to delight me with her storytelling and rich prose. She is now on my automatic-buy list.”
—Bookbug on the Web
About Dating Her Boss:
“Liz Fielding pens a brilliant tale…as she beautifully weaves together a strong emotional conflict, entertaining wit and two dynamic characters.”
—Romantic Times
Dear Reader,
We’re constantly striving to bring you the best romance fiction by the most exciting authors, and in Harlequin Romance
we’re especially keen to feature fresh, sparkling, emotionally exhilarating novels! Modern love stories to suit your every mood—poignant, deeply moving stories; lively, upbeat romances with sparks flying; or sophisticated, edgy novels with a cosmopolitan flavor.
All our authors are special, and we hope you continue to enjoy each month’s new selection of Harlequin Romance titles. This month we’re delighted to feature another book with extra fizz! In Liz Fielding’s fast-paced, witty novel, meet Philly and laugh along with her (and at her!) as she attempts to become a city girl in London….
We hope you enjoy this book by Liz Fielding—it’s fresh, flirty and feel-good!—and look out for future sparkling stories in Harlequin Romance. If you’d like to share your thoughts and comments with us, do please write to:
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Happy reading!
The Editors
City Girl in Training
Liz Fielding
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ONE
The house is on fire and you only have time to grab one item of clothing. Would you choose:
a. the kickin’ hot purple leather miniskirt that turns heads in the street?
b. your expensive go-anywhere black suit?
c. a pair of washed-thin jogging pants that you were wearing when you first met the man of your dreams?
d. the designer skirt you bought in a sale? You’ll never get a bargain like that again.
e. the sweater knitted for you by your grandmother?
‘ARE you sure you don’t want to take this sweater, Philly? Aunt Alice will expect to see you wearing it at Christmas…’ My mother looked up when I didn’t answer and caught me looking at the quiz in the magazine she’d bought me on her last-minute dash to the shops. ‘Save that for the journey, dear,’ she said, as if I were six years old, instead of nearly twenty-three, ‘or you won’t have anything to read on the train.’
I heroically resisted the urge to tell her that while I was the baby of the family, the one who didn’t get a starred first at university, I was quite capable of buying myself a magazine, and instead gave her my full attention. Her question, however, had been purely rhetorical. She’d already unzipped the corner of my case and tucked away the sweater.
It figured.
I’d been haunted by that sweater ever since my Great-Aunt Alice had knitted it for me. It was pale blue and fluffy and I loathed it. I’d planned on putting it in a carton of clothes to be stored in the attic, hoping that a moth would consider it a suitable home for her offspring.
‘You really should have bought a new case. I’m not at all happy about this zip.’
‘The zip is fine,’ I said. At least it had been fine until my mother had added that sweater. ‘I’m catching a train to London, not flying to the other side of the world.’ Unlike my parents who were abandoning me, throwing me upon the mercy of strangers while they went on a world tour visiting their far-flung offspring.
My father had taken early retirement and it was, my mother had told me, time for them to have a little fun visiting my three clever and adventurous brothers in New Zealand, California and South Africa, respectively. And my beautiful, and equally adventurous, clever married sister, and her new babies, in Australia.
Fun! They were parents. Parents weren’t supposed to have fun. They were supposed to stay home, do the crossword, play Scrabble and drink cocoa and I told them so.
They thought that was very funny.
I WASN’T JOKING!
But then, neither were they. They’d spent the last thirty-five years bringing up their family and now they were seriously intent on enjoying themselves. I was the only fly in the ointment. Twenty-two years old, still living at home. Still dating the boy next door. With no sign of a wedding any time soon.
Worse was to come.
I’d assumed they’d go on their extended holiday happy in the knowledge that I’d be there to take care of things while they were away. And the up side was that, with the house to myself, I’d have a real opportunity to move things along with Don. Get his mind out from under the bonnet of his car, away from his mother, and inject some physicality into our relationship.
I was getting desperate for some action while I was still young enough to enjoy it.
But my father’s successor had been looking for somewhere to rent while he and his family found a house in the district. The deal had been done before I’d even heard about it. I’d appealed to my mother, but she’d said it was nothing to do with her. And then—and here was an extraordinary coincidence—my boss (the one who played golf with my dad every Sunday morning) asked me if I’d consider a six-month secondment to the City. Working in a merchant bank. Honing my skills for the next step up the ladder. Promotion. Something I’d been avoiding for the last two years. Promotion meant moving.
But Maybridge was alive with the twanging of strings being pulled and, before I’d known it, my mother had been on the old girls’ network, finding me somewhere to live.
‘It’ll do you good to have a change of scene,’ she said, over my protests. ‘You’re stuck in a rut in Maybridge. Gone as far as you can at the local branch of the bank…’ Everything came in threes, and apparently ruts were no exception. ‘And Don takes you for granted. It will do you both good to stand back and look at where you’re going.’
I knew where I was going—I’d known since I was ten years old—but my mother had a look about her that warned me that any argument would be a waste of breath. An I-know-what’s-best-for-you look. An unexpectedly knowing look that suggested a little enforced separation might shake Don into action.
Nearly twenty-three years old and still a virgin, I was getting desperate for some action.
All this talk of ruts was, however, a bit hard to take from a woman who’d lived with the same man, in the same house, for nearly forty years.
Not that I was criticising her for that. It was what I wanted, too. A lifetime with one man, in one house, raising a family. Just like my mother.
And Don wanted the same thing. Well, obviously he didn’t want a man, he wanted me, he’d said so. He just wasn’t doing anything about making it happen. Perhaps my imminent departure would jolt him out of his complacency.
I’d found him in his garage working on the small vintage car he’d been restoring for what seemed like for ever, told him my news and held my breath.
‘London?’ he said, with that sweet, puzzled expression that made him look as innocent as a baby. Okay, he was innocent. And sweet. If he’d been anything else, I’d have been beating off other girls since he was old enough to shave. But he’d only ever had eyes for me. He pushed back his floppy blond fringe, leaving a smear of grease on his forehead, to look at me with concern. ‘What on earth will you do in London?’
No, no, no!
He was supposed to leap to his feet, wrap me in his arms and tell me that I wasn’t going anywhere without him.
‘Going for the promotion that’s due to me,’ I said, irrationally irritable. ‘Seeing the sights. Having some fun,’ I added, hoping to provoke a little possessiveness.
Why would he be possessive when I’d only ever had eyes for him?
Don frowned but not, apparently, at the thought of me having fun. ‘You mean you’re going for good?’ For one heart-stopping moment I thought I’d got through to him. That he’d finally realised that, unless he did something about it, I wouldn’t be around to read his mind and put the right spanner in his hand whenever he needed it.
My imagination ran momentarily wild with anticipation that he’d leap to his feet, wrap me…etc., etc.
‘Yes,’ I said. That wasn’t quite true, but if I were promoted I would have to move to a larger branch somewhere else. I should have done it a long time ago, but I was comfortable in my rut. Unlike my siblings, I didn’t have an adventurous bone in my body. I’d flown once and I’d been so frightened I’d been sick. Nothing would induce me to repeat the experience. Besides, I liked living at home. Next door to the boy next door.
‘But you’ve been working there since you left college,’ Don said.
His concern about me moving on from my present job was wearing a bit thin. He was supposed to be shocked that I was leaving him.
‘Maybe it’s time to move on,’ I said. And waited for him to do something to change my mind. Exclamations of heartbreak would be a start. Followed by a suggestion that we catch the next plane to Bali and get married right away. On a beach. In the moonlight.
Bali? What was I thinking of? I didn’t want to go to Bali. That would mean getting on a plane. Two planes if I wanted to come home.
All this talk of travelling must have gone to my head.
I needn’t have worried, however, because he did none of the above. Just did that thing with his fringe again, looking adorably helpless, so that I wanted to kiss him and tell him that I didn’t mean it. That I wasn’t going anywhere. I just about managed to restrain myself. ‘Oh, well, I suppose I should say congratulations.’ Then, ‘I’ll really miss you.’ That was marginally better, but my smile was a fraction too fast. ‘I’ll have more time to work on the car, though.’
Er, when? He already spent every spare moment cherishing tender loving care on its engine, bodywork, upholstery, when it was my bodywork that was crying out for a little of that TLC.
‘Great,’ I said. But through gritted teeth.
‘London?’ He repeated the word as if it were a strange and mythical place instead of a sprawling city a scant hour from Maybridge by train. ‘I’m sure you’ll have a terrific time.’
BUT I DON’T WANT TO GO!
My scream of frustration was silent, however. A girl had her pride.
But why couldn’t he see that I wasn’t looking for a terrific time? That what I wanted was for him to tell me to forget all about London, suggest I move in with him and his widowed mother while we looked for a flat we could share…
I didn’t bother to ask any of these questions out loud. I already knew the answer.
Mrs Cooper, a vapid hypochondriac who’d never recovered from the fact that her husband had decamped with his secretary, was always very sweet to my face. I had a strong suspicion, however, that beneath the saccharine exterior she hated me playing with Don just as much now as when he’d been a clever twelve-year-old and I’d distracted him from his homework. There was no way she’d want me so dangerously close to her precious son.
I was seriously tempted to strip off and seduce him, right there and then in the garage, just to spite her. But the floor was bare concrete, the temperature freezing and Don’s hands were covered with motor oil. Only an idiot—or a desperate woman—would remove her thermals under such unpromising circumstances. Okay, so I was desperate, but, short of experience as I was, I suspected that, shivering and blue with cold, I wasn’t going to light anyone’s fire.
‘I do rather envy you, to be honest,’ Don said, distracting me with an odd hint of longing in his voice. ‘All those museums…’
Museums? That was his idea of a terrific time? Sweet, trusting soul that he was, I could have hugged him. But his overalls were covered in oil, too. Of course if I’d been wearing that fluffy sweater I’d have made the sacrifice.
‘Actually,’ he said, with more animation than he’d shown all evening, ‘when you go to the Science Museum you might take a look at…’
The Science Museum? He thought my idea of a fantastic time was an afternoon at the Science Museum? I might take a turn around the V&A to look at the jewellery and fashions but…
‘Promise?’ he said.
Promise? Promise what? Oh, heck, I should have been listening. ‘Why don’t you come up and spend the weekend with me?’ I suggested, suddenly seeing the possibilities… ‘We could go together.’
He looked slightly uncomfortable and, concentrating on wiping his hands on a rag, he said, ‘I don’t think I could leave Mother on her own overnight. She suffers so with her nerves.’
So she did.
She managed to get through the day well enough, while he was at work. She saved up her attacks to coincide with any plans I had for Don. Which was why, on Friday, having waved my parents off on their great adventure, I had to haul my own case aboard the London train. He’d taken the afternoon off to drive me to the station, but his mother had had one of her ‘little turns’ just before we’d been due to leave.
I’d considered having a turn of my own. Flinging myself on the floor and drumming my heels on the hall carpet. But Don had looked so miserable that I’d told him to go back to his mother and wait for the doctor, while I called a taxi and put myself on the train.
As Maybridge disappeared into the icy rain of a November afternoon I settled down with a cheese and pickle sandwich and a comfortingly large hot chocolate drink and, since I had an hour to fill, I took out the magazine.
‘Are You a Tiger or a Kitten?’ screamed at me from a cover flash. I didn’t need a quiz to answer that one. I was nearly twenty-three years old, I had a mother who was still treating me like a child and a boyfriend who’d apparently mislaid his libido.
I was a kitten, right?
Wrong.
Having worked my way through the multiple-choice questions, I discovered that I’d been wildly optimistic.
I was a mouse. Or maybe an ostrich.
That, according to the quiz, was why I was sitting on a train for London when I wanted to stay in Maybridge.
That was why my boyfriend put his mother first. (And because he was sweet and kind and she was a manipulative old witch.) Why I was going to spend Christmas pulling crackers with Great-Aunt Alice instead of getting pulled by Don.
I was too easygoing. Too undemanding. My expectations were so low, they barely registered. I picked up my cheese sandwich and then put it down again quickly. Cheese. A mouse would choose a cheese sandwich.
I should have chosen the fashionable roast vegetables in sun dried tomato bread. But, mouse that I was, I loved cheese.
I should be wearing designer label jeans with high heels, instead of an old pair that had once belonged to the last of my brothers to leave home—shortened to fit my pathetically short legs—with a pair of cheap trainers I’d bought from the market. (I was saving up to get married, okay?)
I should have my nails professionally manicured. I should at least have painted them with something more exciting than the pale pink nail polish I’d borrowed from my mother.
I might never have wanted to be a tiger, but surely I should at least aspire to be a kitten?
Unfortunately any attempt to change my character would only raise a patronising smile in Maybridge. I’d lived there all my life. Who would take me seriously if I changed into a scarlet-nailed temptress overnight?
But it occurred to me that in London, where no one knew me, I could be whatever I chose. I had to face facts. Being mouse-like, I hadn’t been able to untie Don from his mother’s apron strings and fix him to mine.
Maybe my mother—tough though it was to admit this—was right. Maybe a break would do us both good. Don had six months to experience life without me at his side to hand him a wrench before he’d even asked for it.
And I had six months to put on some gloss, put an edge on my character, so that when I went back to Maybridge Don would be down that aisle before he—or his mother—knew what had hit him.
As the train arrived in Paddington I stuffed the magazine into my shoulder bag for further study and grabbed my bulging suitcase from the rack.
New job. New life. New clothes. I was in London and I was going to make the most of it.
I didn’t actually growl as I joined the crowds heading for the underground, but I was beginning to take to the idea of being a tiger.
CHAPTER TWO
It’s the rush hour and raining. You hail the same taxi as a tall, dark and handsome stranger and he suggests sharing. Do you:
a. think it’s your birthday, flirt like mad until you reach your destination, then as you leave the cab hand him your phone number with a look that says ‘Call me…’?
b. remind yourself that your mother would not approve, but it is raining and he doesn’t look like a serial killer. What could be the harm?
c. tell him to get lost and leave him standing on the pavement?
d. let him take the taxi and wait for another one?
e. walk?
HAVING battled with the intricacies of the underground system, only going in the wrong direction twice, I finally emerged into the light of day. When I say light of day, I’m using poetic licence. What actually confronted me was the dark of a wet November evening.
And when I say wet, I do mean wet. No poet needed. The rain, miserable icy drizzle that had perfectly matched my mood when I’d left home, had intensified to the consistency of stair-rods.
In the country it would have been quite dark. But this was London where the neon never set; excitingly opulent shop windows and the rainbow colours of a million Christmas lights were reflected in the wet street, cutting through the gathering gloom.
And there were people, hundreds and hundreds of people, all with somewhere to go and in a hurry to get there.
I stood in the entrance to the underground, A-Z in hand, trying to orientate myself as impatient travellers pushed past me. On paper, it didn’t seem far to Sophie and Kate Harrington’s flat, but I was well aware that distance, on paper, could be deceiving. And my problems with north and south on the underground system had seriously undermined any confidence in my ability to map read. A taxi seemed like a wise investment and as I glanced up I spotted the yellow light on a cruising black cab.
I’d never hailed a taxi before—in Maybridge taxis didn’t cruise for custom, you had to telephone for one—but I knew how to do it. In theory. I’d seen people do it on television often enough. You stood on the kerb, raised your hand and yelled ‘Taxi!’…
I’d never make it to the kerb before it passed so I raised my hand and waved hopefully, but, realising that my self-consciously ladylike rendition of ‘Taxi!’ didn’t stand a chance of being heard over the noise of traffic, I tried again, this time yelling loud enough to wake the dead. I didn’t care. It had worked! The driver was heading for the kerb, pulling up a few yards ahead of me.
Wow! Who was the mouse now? I thought smugly as I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and, towing it after me, I cut recklessly through the crowds who were charging along, heads collectively down against the rain. Before I got to the kerb, however, someone had already opened the taxi door and was closing his umbrella prior to boarding.
‘Hey, you! That’s mine!’ I declared, uncharacteristically tiger-like in my defence of my first London taxi, despite the fact that my adversary towered above me.
The black silk umbrella he was holding collapsed in a shower of rainwater, most of which went over me, and the taxi thief glanced at me with every indication of impatience.
‘On the contrary, I hailed it before you even saw it,’ he said, giving me the briefest of glances. Brief was apparently all it took. After a moment’s astonished gaze, he muttered something beneath his breath that I didn’t quite catch—but didn’t for a moment believe was complimentary—and, with a look of resignation that suggested he was being a fool to himself, he stood back and gestured at the open door. ‘Take it. Before you drown.’
Oh, no. This was bad. I could be mad at a man who nicked my cab, but I couldn’t take it if it was rightfully his, even if my need was clearly the greater.
He did, after all, have an umbrella.
But I was already so wet that no amount of rain would make any difference. As I dithered on the kerb, he was rapidly getting the same way. But it had only taken a moment’s reflection, a pause long enough for my brain to override my mouth, for me to realise that I had in fact seen him standing at the edge of the pavement in that moment when I’d looked up from the A-Z. That my own efforts to attract the driver’s attention from the back of the pavement had gone unheeded. Feeling very stupid, the tiger in me morphed back into mouse.
‘No, really,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry…’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ He seized the handle of my suitcase, crammed with everything I might need for the next six months and weighing a ton, and tossed it into the cab without noticeable effort. ‘Stop wittering and get in.’
‘Would one of you get in?’ the driver demanded testily. ‘I’ve got a living to make.’
‘Maybe we could share,’ I said, scrambling in after my suitcase. My irritable knight errant paused in the act of closing the door behind me. ‘I’m not going far and you could…um…we could…’ He waited for me to finish. ‘At least you’d be in the dry.’
Oh, heck. This wasn’t like the quiz at all. I wasn’t supposed to do the asking. But then the quiz wasn’t real life.
In my real life I didn’t offer to share taxis with tall, dark and handsome strangers. In my real life Friday evenings were spent handing Don his spanners as he talked endlessly about the intricacies of the internal combustion engine; a well-drilled theatre nurse to his mechanical surgeon. Comfortable. Familiar. Safe. Nothing to get the heart racing. Not the way mine was racing now.
‘Where are you going?’
I told him and he raised his brows a fraction.
‘Is that on your way?’ I asked.
After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded, told the driver where to go, then climbed in and pulled down the jump seat opposite me, sitting sideways, his legs stretched across the width of the cab, so that his knees and feet wouldn’t intrude on my space.
He had the biggest feet I’d ever seen and as I stared at them I found myself wondering if it was true about the size of a man’s feet indicating the size of, well, other extremities…
‘You’re new in London aren’t you?’ he said, and I looked up. The corner of his mouth had kinked up in a knowing smile and I blushed, certain that he could read my mind.
‘Just this minute arrived.’ There was no point in pretending otherwise. I’d dressed for warmth and comfort rather than style. With nothing more glamorous than baby cream on my face—I’d chewed off my lipstick in the tussle with the underground—and my hair neon-red candyfloss from the damp, I was never going to pass as a sophisticated City-girl. ‘I suppose the suitcase is a dead giveaway,’ I said, wishing I’d taken a lot more trouble over my appearance.
A tiger, according to my magazine, would always leave the house prepared to meet the man of her dreams. But how often did that happen? Besides, I’d left the man of my dreams in Maybridge. Hadn’t I?
‘And the A-Z,’ I added, stuffing it into my shoulder bag, alongside the treacherous magazine.
‘Not the suitcase,’ he replied. ‘It was your willingness to surrender a taxi at this time of day that betrayed you. You won’t do it twice.’
‘I won’t?’
‘They’re rarer than hen’s teeth.’
Hen’s teeth? ‘Are they rare?’ I asked, confused. It seemed unlikely. Hens weren’t on any endangered list…
‘I’ve never seen one.’ Oh, stocking tops! The rain was dripping from my hair and trickling icily down the back of my neck. I suspected that it had seeped right into my brain. ‘But then I’ve never felt any desire to look into a hen’s beak,’ he added.
‘No one ever does,’ I replied. ‘Big mistake.’ And he was kind enough to smile, giving me ample opportunity to see for myself that his own teeth left nothing to be desired.
In the dark and wet of the pavement I hadn’t noticed much more than the fact that my ‘tall, dark stranger’ was the requisite ‘tall’. Of course, when describing yourself as one point six metres was pure vanity, everyone seemed tall. But he was really, really tall. Several inches taller than Don, who was my personal yardstick for tall.
And his voice. I’d noticed that, too.
Low and gravelly, it was the voice of a man you just knew it wouldn’t be wise to mess with. Yet his impatience was softened by velvet undertones. Sort of like Sean Connery, but without the Scottish accent.
Now I was sitting opposite him I could see that the ‘dark’ bit fitted him, too. I sat mesmerised as a drop of rainwater gathered and slid down the jet curve of an untidy curl before dropping into the turned-up collar of his overcoat. And I shivered.
Tall and dark. His skin so deeply tanned that he looked Italian, or possibly Greek.
But he struck out on handsome.
There was nothing smooth or playboy pretty about his features. His cheekbones were too prominent, his nose less than straight and there was a jagged scar just above his right eyebrow, giving the overall impression of a man who met life head-on and occasionally came off worst.
That was okay. There was something about a cliché that was so off-putting. Two out of three was just about right. Tall, dark and dangerous was more like it, because his eyes more than made up for any lack of symmetry. They were sea-green, deep enough to drown in and left me with the heart-racing impression that until now I might have been dreaming in sepia.
‘Have you come far?’ he asked, in an attempt to engage me in conversation. Presumably to stop me from staring.
I was jerked back to reality. ‘Oh…um …no. Not really. From Maybridge. It’s near…er…’ I struggled for a coherent response. I was used to having to explain exactly where Maybridge was. People constantly confused it with Maidenhead, Maidstone and a dozen other towns that began with the same sound, but my mind refused to co-operate.
‘I know where Maybridge is,’ he said, rescuing me from my pitiful lapse of memory. ‘I have friends who live in Upper Haughton.’
‘Upper Haughton!’ I exclaimed, clutching at geographical straws. Upper Haughton was a picture-perfect village a few miles outside Maybridge that had outgrown its agricultural past and was now the province of the seriously rich. ‘Yes, that’s it. It’s near Upper Haughton.’
The mouse in me wanted to groan, bury my face in my hands. Wanted to go back five minutes so that I could keep my big mouth shut and let him steal my taxi. His taxi.
But the tiger in me wanted to write my name and telephone number on a card and murmur ‘call me’ in a sultry voice. Since he must by now believe I was at least one sandwich short of a picnic, it was perhaps fortunate that I didn’t have a card handy and was thus saved the embarrassment of making a total fool of myself.
Instead, I glanced at my wrist-watch, not because I wanted to know the time—I had no pressing engagement—but to avoid looking into his eyes again.
‘We’re nearly there,’ he said. Then, ‘Are you staying long? In London.’
‘Six months,’ I said. ‘My parents are travelling…Australia, South Africa, America…and they decided to let the house…’ I was ‘wittering’ again and, remembering his impatience, stopped myself. ‘So here I am.’
‘While the cat’s away?’ he suggested, with another of those knowing smiles.
Clearly he hadn’t had any trouble spotting that I was a mouse. Fortunately, the taxi swept up to the front of a stunningly beautiful riverside apartment building, terraced in sweeping lines and lit up like an ocean liner, and I was saved the necessity of answering him. For a moment I sat open-mouthed at the sight while, apparently impatient to be rid of me, my companion opened the door and stepped out, lifting my case onto the footpath. Then, gentleman that he was, he opened his umbrella and handed it to me as I followed him, before turning to speak to the driver while I dug out my purse and found a five pound note.
‘Put that away,’ he said as I offered it.
‘No, really, I insist,’ I said. I couldn’t let him pay my fare. He didn’t bother to argue. He just closed the taxi door, picked up my suitcase and headed for the front door, leaving me with a five pound note in one hand and his umbrella in the other. The taxi drove off.
‘Hey, wait…’ I wasn’t sure whether I was shouting at the driver, who clearly hadn’t realised he still had a fare, or Mr Tall, Dark and Dangerous himself.
I’d been warned about the security system on the front door. You had to have a smart card, or ring the bell of the person you were visiting so that they could let you into the building. TDD bypassed the system by catching the door as someone left the building, and was now holding it open. Standing in the entrance. Waiting for me to join him.
He wasn’t going anywhere, I realised.
‘While the cat’s away…’ he’d said.
And my memory instantly filled in the blank. ‘The mouse will play.’
And I hadn’t denied it.
Did he think I couldn’t wait to get started? Expect to be invited in? Offered…and I swallowed hard…coffee? Had my invitation to share the taxi been completely misunderstood?
I realised just how rash I’d been. Naïve. Worse…just plain stupid.
I’d allowed this man whom I’d never met before, whose name I didn’t even know, to give the driver the address. I hadn’t heard what he’d said and, too late, it occurred to me that I could be anywhere.
And who’d miss me?
I’d actually told him that my parents were on the other side of the world, for heaven’s sake!
How long would it be before Sophie and Kate Harrington raised the alarm when I didn’t arrive? When I’d spoken to Sophie, she hadn’t been exactly enthusiastic about me moving in. In fact I’d got the distinct impression that she, like me, had had her arm painfully twisted.
She certainly wouldn’t be dialling the emergency services today. Or tomorrow. Not until Don called, anyway…
Anticipation of his agonised realisation that I might not even have got on the train, that my disappearance might be entirely his fault for not seeing me off, made me feel momentarily happier.
The pleasure was short-lived, however, swamped by instant recall of a lifetime of my mother’s awful warnings about the inadvisability of taking lifts from strangers. And with that thought came relief.
My mother, even from thirty thousand feet, came to my rescue as, pushing the five-pound note into my jacket pocket, I gripped my attack alarm. It was just a small thing on a keyring and I’m ashamed to say that I’d laughed when she’d given it to me, made me promise I’d carry it with me while I was in London. But, as she’d pointed out, I’d need a new keyring so it might as well be this one…
I sent a belated—and silent—thank-you heaven-ward before forcing my mouth into an approximation of a smile and looking up at the man I’d decided was tall, dark and dangerous. As if that were a good thing.
‘You really didn’t have to see me right to the door,’ I said, trying on a laugh for size. It wasn’t convincing.
‘I wouldn’t,’ he assured me, ‘if I didn’t live in the apartment next door to you.’
‘Next door?’ He lived in the same block? Next door? Relief surged through me and I very nearly laughed.
‘Shall we get inside?’ he said coolly. He’d clearly cottoned on to my unease and was offended. ‘If you’ll just close the umbrella—’
In my hurry to comply, I yanked my hand out of my pocket and the keyring alarm flew out with it.
I made a wild grab for it and as my fingers closed over it I felt the tiny switch shift. I said one heartfelt word. Fortunately, it was obliterated by a banshee wail that my mother probably heard halfway to Australia.
Startled by the blast of sound, I let go of the umbrella, which, caught by a gust of wind, bowled away across the entrance and towards the road. TDD—his patience tried beyond endurance—swore briefly and let my suitcase drop as he lunged after it. It was too much for the over-stressed zip and the case burst open in a shower of underwear. Plain, white, comfortable underwear. The kind you’d never admit to wearing. He froze, transfixed by the horror of the moment, and the world seemed to stand still, catch its breath.
Then reality rushed back in full colour. With surround sound.
The rain, the piercing, mind-deadening noise of the alarm, the red-hot embarrassment that was right off any scale yet invented.
I was gripping the keyring in my fist, as if I could somehow contain the noise. There was a trick to switching it off—otherwise any attacker could do it. But I was beyond rational thought.
TDD’s mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying and finally he grabbed my wrist, prised open my fingers and dropped the wretched thing on the footpath. Then he put his heel on it and ground it flat. It seemed to take for ever before the sound finally died.
The silence, if anything, was worse.
‘Thank you,’ I said when the feeling came back to my ears, but my voice came out as little more than a squeak. A mouse squeak and heaven alone knew that at that moment I wished I were a real mouse—one with a hole to disappear down.
‘Wait here,’ he said, and the chill factor in his voice turned the gravel into crushed ice. Well, it wouldn’t take a genius to work out why I was holding an attack alarm. He’d surrendered his taxi to me, refused my share of the fare, and I’d reacted to his kindness as if he were some kind of monster.
As my abused knight errant disappeared into the darkness in search of his umbrella, I knew that I should go after him, help him track it down. I told myself he’d probably prefer it if I didn’t. That was what the ‘wait here’ had been all about. A keep-your-distance-before-you-do-any-more-damage command. Besides, I could hardly leave my knickers scattered across the entrance to this unbelievably grand block of flats.
I captured a pair that was about to blow away and stuffed it into my pocket. I knew I should wait for his return, apologise abjectly, offer to pay for any repairs. After all that wasn’t any old cheap-and-cheerful bumbershoot. The kind that it didn’t matter much if you left it on the bus. The kind I regularly left on buses.
Gathering the rest of my scattered belongings, I reasoned that waiting was not necessary. He lived next door. I could put a note through his letterbox later. I sincerely believed that when he’d had a moment to think, calm down, he’d prefer that.
Which was why I stuffed my clothes back into the case as fast as I could before sprinting for the lift.
Sophie Harrington took her time about opening the door. I stood there with my case gripped under both my arms to prevent the contents falling out, wishing she’d hurry up.
I’d promised myself while I’d been travelling up in the lift that next time I met my new next-door neighbour I’d be dressed tidily, with my hair and my mouth under control. I didn’t expect him to be impressed, but hoped he’d realise I wasn’t the complete idiot he’d—with good reason—thought me.
Heck, even I thought I was an idiot. And I knew better.
But if Sophie didn’t hurry up, I’d still be standing in the hall when he reached the top floor.
It wasn’t an appealing prospect and I hitched up my suitcase and rang the bell again. The door was instantly flung open by a girl in a bathrobe and a bad mood.
Oh, good start.
Having gravely offended the next door neighbour, I’d now got my new flatmate out of the shower.
And if I hadn’t already known just how bad I looked—the lift had mirrored walls—her expression would have left me in no doubt.
‘You must be Philly Gresham,’ she said, with a heaven-help-us sigh. ‘I’m Sophie Harrington. You’d better come in.’
‘Thanks.’ I stepped into the hall, still clinging to my suitcase and unwilling to put it down. The floor was pale polished hardwood and I didn’t want to make a mess. ‘I’ve had a bit of an accident,’ I said, unnecessarily. But I felt someone had to fill that huge, unwelcoming silence. ‘The zip broke.’
Sophie’s older sister, Kate, appeared behind her and, taking one look at me, said, ‘Good grief, did you swim here?’ Then, kinder, she said, ‘I’ll show you your room. You can dump that and have a hot shower while Sophie makes a pot of tea. You look as if you could do with a cup.’
That had to be the understatement of the year.
Sophie didn’t look as if making a pot of tea had been part of her immediate plans, but after another sigh—just to reinforce the message—she flounced off.
‘Take no notice of my little sister,’ Kate said as she led the way. ‘She had other plans for your room. She’ll get over it.’
‘Oh?’ I said politely, imagining a study, or a work-room.
‘There’s a stunning new man at work. He’s just moved down from Aberdeen and he’s looking for somewhere to live. She’d planned to seduce him with low-rent accommodation.’ She glanced back at me, her expression solemn, but her eyes danced with humour. ‘A mistake, don’t you think? Suppose he moved in and then brought home a succession of equally stunning girls?’
‘Nothing but trouble,’ I agreed, with equal solemnity.
We exchanged a look that suggested that, two years older than Sophie, we were both too old, too wise to ever do anything that stupid and I decided that, while the jury was out on Sophie, I was going to like Kate.
‘I was quite relieved when Aunt Cora phoned and asked if we could put you up, to be honest. Sophie threw a tantrum but she knows that when Aunt Cora commands…’ She obviously thought I knew what she was talking about.
‘Aunt Cora?’
‘My mother’s sister. This is her flat. A small part of the spoils of a very lucrative divorce settlement. Happily she prefers to live in France so we get to house-sit.’
‘At a price.’
‘We just pay the expenses, which admittedly are not low…’ Then, ‘Oh, you mean you.’ And she laughed. ‘Don’t worry about it. Sophie’ll come round.’ She stopped. ‘This is your room.’
And she opened a door to the kind of bedroom I’d only ever seen in lifestyle articles in the Sunday supplements. A blond wood floor, taupe walls, a low double bed with real blankets and the bed-linen was just that. Linen. It was spare, stylish and, in comparison with my single-bedded room at home with its floral wallpaper, shelves full of favourite childhood books and menagerie of stuffed animals—very grown up.
‘It’s lovely,’ I said. Still unwilling to put down my suitcase and spoil the perfection.
‘It looks too much like a department store-room setting for my taste. It needs living in.’ She glanced at me, standing practically to attention, afraid to touch anything, and grinned. ‘Relax, Philly. Don’t be afraid to muss it up and make yourself at home.’ She crossed the room and threw open another door. ‘You’ve got an en suite shower. And this,’ she said, ignoring the reality of my ruined suitcase, ‘is a walk-in wardrobe.’
It didn’t take a theoretical physicist to work out that I didn’t need a walk-in anything. A small cupboard would accommodate my limited wardrobe with space left over. But what with a uniform for work and overalls for the garage—neither of which was needed in London—I was rather short of clothes. My priority had been saving up for a deposit on a home of my own so that when Don eventually realised that there was more to life than old cars there’d be nothing to stop us. I was going to assuage my misery by blowing some of it on some serious working clothes. If I wasn’t going to have a personal life for the next six months, I might as well do my career some good.
‘Do you want to give me your jacket? I’ll hang it up to dry.’
It occurred to me that people who lived in this kind of apartment block couldn’t hang out their washing on a line in the back garden. ‘Is there a launderette nearby? Some of my…um…clothes got a bit muddy.’
‘Possibly, but why go out in the rain when we’ve got everything you need right here? Washer, dryer and the finest steam iron a divorce settlement can buy.’
A dryer? I quashed the thought that my mother wouldn’t approve and grinned. ‘Thanks, Kate.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she said. ‘Now I’d better go and make sure that my sulky little sister isn’t lacing your tea with something unpleasant. Don’t stand on ceremony. A bathrobe is as formal as it gets around here at this time on a Friday.’ And she grinned. ‘Just follow the sound of Sophie’s teeth gnashing when you’re ready.’
CHAPTER THREE
It’s dark and raining. Your room-mates have gone out and you’re on your own in a strange flat. As you turn on the cooker to prepare some absolutely vital comfort food you blow the fuses. Do you:
a. remember that there’s a pub on the corner? You can get something to eat there and find a bloke who knows how to fix a fuse. Excellent.
b. go next door for help? The guy who lives there never leaves the house in daylight, but, hey, it’s dark, so that’s not a problem.
c. ring the emergency services and cry?
d. keep a torch and spare fuse wire by the fuse-box? You fix the fuse yourself.
e. just cry?
‘FEELING better?’
Kate was on her own in the kitchen and waved in the direction of the teapot, indicating that I should help myself.
‘Much,’ I said, although I felt a little self-conscious in my aged bathrobe, with my hair wrapped in one of the thick soft towels that had been left for me. I’d never shared a flat with girls my own age before but I had friends who were quick to tell me that it was a minefield.
Rows over who’d taken the last of the milk, or bread. Rows over telephone bills. And worst of all, rows over men. At least that wouldn’t be a problem. I had enough trouble holding my own man’s attention against the incomparable glamour of a carburettor, let alone attracting any attention from any of theirs.
Kate seemed friendly enough but I didn’t want her to think I was freeloading. ‘I need to go shopping, stock up on the essentials, if you’ll point me in the direction of the nearest supermarket,’ I said as I filled a cup.
‘Don’t worry tonight. So long as you don’t eat Sophie’s cottage cheese you’ll be fine.’
‘No problem,’ I said, with feeling, and we both grinned.
‘Do you know anyone in London, Philly?’
I shook my head. Then said, ‘Well…’ Kate waited. ‘I met the man who lives next door. We hailed the same taxi and since we were going in the same direction it seemed logical to share. Not that I knew he lived next door then, of course.’
Kate looked surprised. Actually it did seem pretty unlikely, but it wasn’t the coincidence that bothered her. ‘You got into a taxi with a man you didn’t know?’
I was still feeling a little bit wobbly about that myself.
‘It was raining. And he was prepared to let me take it. He was really, very…um…’ On the point of saying kind, I was assailed by a vivid recollection of impatience barely held in check behind fathoms-deep sea-green eyes. Of his heel grinding my attack alarm in the pavement. Of his sharp ‘wait here’. And my mouth dried on ‘kind’.
‘Yes?’
‘Actually, I owe him an apology.’ I swallowed. ‘And probably a new umbrella.’ Kate’s brows quirked upwards. ‘It’s a long story.’
‘Then it’s one that’ll have to keep. I’ve got a date with a totally gorgeous barrister. I’d have cancelled when I realised you would be arriving today, but I have long-term plans for this one and I’m not risking him out alone on Friday night.’ And she grinned as she pushed herself off her stool. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not leaving you on your own with Sophie. She’s going to a party. I would have asked her to take you but, in her present mood, I couldn’t positively guarantee you’d have a good time.’
‘No,’ I said. Relieved. The thought of going to a party, being forced into the company of a roomful of strangers, with or without Sophie, was not appealing.
And when, an hour or so later, Sophie drifted into the kitchen on high, high heels, ethereal in silvery chiffon, a fairy dusting of glitter across her shoulders, her white-blonde hair a mass of tiny waves, the relief intensified.
If I’d walked into a room alongside her fragile beauty, I’d have looked not just like a mouse, but a well-fed country mouse.
‘Will you be all right on your own?’ Kate asked, following her, equally stunning in the kind of simple black dress that didn’t come from any store that had a branch in Maybridge High Street. ‘There’s a pile of videos if there’s nothing on television you fancy and a list of fast-food outlets that deliver by the phone.’ And she grinned. ‘We don’t cook if we can help it.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said, trying not to dwell on the fact that, for the first time in as long as I could remember on a Friday night, Don would not be bounding up to my front door ready to fall in with whatever I’d planned for the evening. Even if it did involve sitting through a chick-flick. I tried not to picture him down the pub with his car-crazy mates—no doubt encouraged by his miraculously restored mother not to ‘sit at home and brood’. Instead I gestured ironically in the direction of the washing machine where my knickers were going through the rinse cycle. ‘I’ve got plenty to do.’
Kate laughed. ‘Whatever turns you on,’ she said as the bell rang from the front entrance.
‘Come on, Kate, that’ll be the taxi,’ Sophie said, with a pitying glance in my direction before she went to let the driver know they were on their way.
But Kate hesitated, turned back, the slightest frown creasing her lovely forehead. ‘Was it Gorgeous George or Wee Willy?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Did you share a taxi with George or Willy?’
On the point of explaining that we hadn’t actually exchanged names, I realised how lame that sounded. On the other hand, while neither name seemed to suit my unfortunate Galahad, no one in their right mind would have referred to him as Wee Willy…
‘Gorgeous George?’ I repeated. A question, rather than an answer.
‘Tall, dark—’
‘That’s the one,’ I said.
‘And very, very gay.’
‘Gay?’
She gave me an old-fashioned look that suggested I might be even more of a hick than I looked. ‘You didn’t realise?’
Gay? He was gay?
No, I hadn’t realised. I’d been too busy falling into his hypnotic green eyes…
I pulled myself together, managed a shrug. ‘I wasn’t paying that much attention,’ I said. ‘And he was more interested in chasing his umbrella. In fact I should make sure he found it. Which side does he live on?’
Not that I intended to do more than put my apology—along with an offer to pay for repairs or a replacement—in writing and slip it beneath his door. He would undoubtedly take the hint and respond in kind. After that, if we ever passed in the hall, neither of us would have to do more than nod, which would be a relief all round, I told myself.
‘Out of the door, turn right. End of the hall. Number seventy-two.’ Then she grinned and said, ‘Don’t wait up.’
‘Gorgeous George?’ I repeated as the door banged shut behind Kate and Sophie. Trying to get my head round the idea. Trying to work out quite why my heart was sinking like a stone.
Clearly it had nothing to do with the man who lived next door. It had to be because I was alone on a Friday night in a city where I had no friends. My parents were thirty thousand feet above terra firma in another time zone and the man in my life, if he wasn’t cosied up with his beloved car, was down the pub having a good time without me.
So I did what I always did when I felt down. I opened the fridge.
What I needed—and urgently—was food. But Sophie could relax; her cottage cheese was safe from me. I wanted comfort food.
A bacon and egg sandwich. Or sausages. Something warm, and satisfying and packed with heart-clogging cholesterol. If it was clogged, it wouldn’t feel so empty.
But no such luck. The fridge was a fat-free zone.
Then I opened the dairy drawer and hit the jackpot. Either Sophie had a secret vice, or Kate was a girl after my own heart.
There was a pack of expensive, unsalted butter—the kind that tasted like cream spread on bread—and a great big wedge of farmhouse Cheddar cheese from a shop near Covent Garden that I’d read about in the food section of the Sunday paper. I broke a piece off to taste. And drooled.
I passed on the butter. I didn’t need butter. Cheese on toast would do very nicely.
It wouldn’t be a hardship to take a trip to Covent Garden in the morning and replace it. I could buy my own supply at the same time and take a look around. Cheered at the idea, I turned on the grill and put the bread to toast on one side. Then I hunted through the cupboards until I found some chilli powder.
Excellent.
It was past its sell-by date—well, Kate had said they didn’t cook. From the state of the cupboards, she did not exaggerate. But I wasn’t going to get food poisoning from geriatric spice. I’d just have to use more.
I turned back to the stove to check the toast, but the grill hadn’t come on and, realising that the cooker was turned off at the main switch, I reached across the worktop and flipped it down.
Several things happened at once.
There was a blue flash, a loud bang and everything went dark. Then I screamed.
It was nothing really over the top as screams went.
It was loud, but nowhere near the ear-rending decibels expected of the heroine in a low-budget horror movie. I was startled—knee-tremblingly, heart-poundingly startled. Not scared witless.
It was also pointless since there was no one around to respond with sympathy for my plight.
I was on my own. Totally on my own. For the first time in my life, there wasn’t a soul I could call on for help. I stood there in total darkness, gripping the work surface as if my life depended on it, while my heart gradually slowed to its normal pace and I made a very determined effort not to feel sorry for myself.
I’d blown a fuse. It wasn’t the end of the world.
It just felt like it.
Beyond the windows, on the far side of the river, the lights of London twinkled back at me, mockingly. They knew I was out of my depth.
Back home all I’d have to do was pick up the phone and call Don. Not that I’d need him to mend the fuse, but his presence would have been a comfort. And how often did I have the perfect excuse to have him alone with me in a totally empty house? A dark empty house.
His mother might suspect me of planning to take unfair advantage of her precious son, but she wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it. Not in an emergency. Not without showing her true colours. And she was too clever for that.
But I wasn’t in Maybridge and Don didn’t live next door.
Next door lived a man who’d seen my underwear. Which was more than Don had managed in the best part of thirteen years.
That it was plain, serviceable, ordinary underwear should have made it marginally less embarrassing, but somehow the fact that he knew I wore boring knickers only made things worse.
Why, I had no idea. He was gay. He wasn’t in the slightest bit interested in my underwear, except perhaps aesthetically.
Why was I even thinking about him?
I didn’t need anybody. I could mend a fuse. All I had to do was find the fuse box.
The cloak cupboard by the door was the most likely place and, keeping hold of the work surfaces, I edged around the kitchen until I found the door. Then, feeling my way along the wall, I set off in what I hoped was the direction of the front door.
It would have been easier if there had been some light. At home we kept candles and matches under the kitchen sink for ‘emergencies’. I might have teased my mother about her obsession with ‘emergencies’, but, while I wasn’t about to admit that I really, really wanted her right now, in the thick blackness of the windowless hall I’d have warmly welcomed a little of her forward planning.
What I got was a shin-height table and the expensive sound of breaking porcelain as I flailed wildly to save myself from falling.
It had to be expensive. Everything about this flat was expensive, from its location to its smallest fitting. I was lucky to be living here, even temporarily, I knew—my mother had told me so. At that precise moment I didn’t feel lucky. I felt like screaming again.
I didn’t. Instead I rubbed my painful shins and considered my options.
I could pack and leave before Sophie and Kate got home.
I could hide the broken crocks—along with the evidence of my attempts at cooking—in my suitcase, go to bed and act surprised in the morning when nothing worked.
I could cry.
Actually, I was closer to tears than at any time since my grandmother had died. But all tears did was make your eyes and nose red, so I resisted the urge to sit on the horrible table and bawl my eyes out. Instead, I edged my way carefully past the broken china and made it to the cloak cupboard without further mishap.
I’d thought it was dark in the hall. In the cupboard it was black.
At home—and at this point I was beginning to realise that I’d seriously underrated my mother—there would have been a torch handily placed on top of the fuse-box, along with spare fuse wire.
‘Mum,’ I said, lifting my face in the darkness so that she could hear me better. ‘I swear I’ll never call you a fussy old bat ever again.’ Not that I ever had—well, not to her face. ‘I’ll wear warm underwear without being nagged, replace my attack alarm first thing tomorrow and never, ever go out without a clean handkerchief…just, please, please, let there be a torch with the fuse box.’ I groped in the darkness.
There was no torch.
I was released from the warm underwear promise—not that it mattered because the way my life was going no one was ever going to see it in situ—but I was still in the dark. Fortunately, the cloak cupboard was right by the front door and it occurred to me that, since I was now living in a luxury apartment, I could borrow some light from the well-lit communal hallway.
Pleased with myself, I opened the door and screamed again—this time with no holds barred—as a tall figure, silhouetted in black against the light, reached out for me.
Sound-blasted back by my scream, he retreated into the light and I belatedly recognised the neighbour I least wanted to meet. And he hadn’t been reaching out to grab my throat as my lurid imagination had suggested, but to ring the doorbell.
It was the first time I’d seen him in full light and there was nothing about him to suggest that my earlier assessment of him had been wrong. He was tall, he was dark. And the way my heart was pumping confirmed that he was, without doubt, dangerous. To my equilibrium, if nothing else.
But what really held my attention was the large flat carton balanced on the palm of his hand. He might be dangerous but he’d got pizza and my stomach—anticipating the promised cheese on toast—responded with an excited gurgle.
‘Yes?’ I demanded, to cover my embarrassment.
‘You screamed,’ he said.
‘You scared me,’ I snapped back as, for the second time in as many minutes, I waited for my heart to steady. Then, ‘What do you want?’
‘Not just now when you opened the door,’ he said, with the careful speech of a man who believed he was dealing with an idiot. ‘You screamed a minute or two ago—’
A minute or two? It seemed as if I’d been in the dark for hours…
‘—and since I saw your friends go out, I thought I’d better make sure you’re not just watching a scary video alone in the dark.’
‘Oh,’ I said. It was just as well I wasn’t trying to impress this man. He clearly thought I was a total ditz. ‘Sorry. I didn’t realise the walls were so thin.’
‘They’re not.’ He said this with the authority of a man who knew. ‘I was at my door when you—’
He seemed reluctant to use the word again and I could scarcely blame him. ‘Screamed,’ I said, rescuing him. ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you. The fuses blew. That’s all.’ All! ‘I was just going to fix them.’
‘You know how?’ he said, without bothering to disguise his disbelief.
I tried to remember that he was being kind. A good neighbour. That he could have just shut his door. ‘They teach girls stuff like that in school these days,’ I assured him.
‘Really?’ He seemed unimpressed but he didn’t argue. Didn’t do that ‘I’m a big clever man and you’re just a girl’ thing that most men did. Instead he said, ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it.’ Which should have been more gratifying than it was. He took a step in the direction of his own front door, then hesitated, turned back. ‘You’ve got spare fuse wire?’
There had been none where I’d have expected it to be and it occurred to me that I might yet be grateful for his ‘good neighbour’ act.
‘I shouldn’t think so for a minute,’ I said. Keeping my smile to myself.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve only seen your flatmates from a distance. Very decorative, but they didn’t strike me as the practical type.’
I considered the fragile beauty of Sophie, the cool sophistication of Kate. ‘You may be right,’ I said. Women who looked like that would never need to be practical.
‘Why don’t you see if you can find the blown fuse while I fetch some wire?’ he suggested.
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Liz Fielding
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Стоимость: 463.26 ₽
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: City Girl in Training, электронная книга автора Liz Fielding на английском языке, в жанре современные любовные романы