Читать книгу Husband-To-Be - Linda Miles - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

A CLEAR February sky was turning a deeper blue, a brilliant orange sun was setting as Rachel Hawkins stepped into the street and left Morrison’s Feed & Supply for the last time. Out of another job. And everything had looked so promising too.

She’d run the place perfectly well for two months while Mr Morrison had followed doctor’s orders in Marbella. Profits were up, costs down; who could have guessed he’d be so annoyed by a few little changes?

‘Perhaps,’ he’d said sarcastically, ‘you may have noticed the words “feed” and “supply” above the door, you may have noticed the absence of the word “zoo”. There is a reason for this, Rachel, and the reason—’ a scowl had split the newly tanned face ‘—is that this is a feed supply business, and not a bally menagerie. I want that lot out by the end of the week.’ A dramatic hand had pointed to the back, which was certainly rather livelier than it had been in the days when empty feed sacks had been stacked there. ‘And you are going with them.’

Rachel sighed. Looking on the bright side, she’d managed to find homes for all the animals except one. Looking on the dark side, as far as Aunt Harriet was concerned, that probably left one too many. Rachel glanced down dubiously at the box with holes in which she’d put the tiny furry creature. He was quiet and perfectly house-trained, but Aunt Harriet had always refused to have a pet in the house, and something told Rachel that her aunt would not make an exception for William.

Looking on the bright side again, for the first time in years Rachel Hawkins had spent a whole six months not standing thigh-deep in a swamp, providing good, wholesome nourishment for mosquitoes. Any day now the papers would be splashing out in headlines on this new shock to the ecosystem, she thought flippantly. She could see them now: SHOCK! HORROR! PROBE! ACUTE HAWKINS SHORTAGE SPARKS MOSQUITO FAMINE! ‘They were dying like flies,’ said one horrified observer. Well, it was just too bad, Rachel thought with a grin.

Driscoll had said she’d be bored, but she hadn’t been; she’d loved every minute of it. She was still one hundred per cent committed to marrying Driscoll, but Rachel Hawkins was not—repeat not—going to be a professional scientist. Of course, going through four jobs in six months maybe didn’t give you much time to get bored, she admitted fair-mindedly. But she just knew she’d made the right decision. Sooner or later she’d find the right job. Maybe even a job that let her wear a suit.

A suit. That was what she needed right now, in fact. In the brilliant late afternoon sunshine an adjacent shop window showed only her own reflection dressed for the unseasonably warm weather, haircut to match. Mr Morrison hadn’t approved; what would Driscoll think? If only Brian, misfit stable lad and self-taught hair artiste, hadn’t decided he was the heir to the flying scissors of Sassoon! His ‘practice trim’ had left her looking like the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz; she’d had to go to a professional to have it evened up.

‘It will have to be very, very short,’ the professional had warned ominously.

Rachel had had visions of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music—something short, boyish but very, very chic. She now eyed, doubtfully, the soot-black hair that framed her face, the enormous blue eyes under fly-away brows, the full, almost pouting mouth. Well, it was certainly short.

It would probably look chic, too, if she had, say, a Dior suit to go with it. For some reason, though, she didn’t look a bit like the respectable twenty-seven-year-old author of The Thing From the Swamp, Son of Thing and Thing Meets Godzilla—to use Rachel’s personal titles for her research. For some reason she looked like an eighteen-year-old punk. Maybe it was the Doc Martens? The black jeans? Or maybe it was the Spiderman T-shirt. Whatever, Driscoll wouldn’t like it.

Rachel sighed. Why was life so complicated? Still, first things first—she must have one last shot at finding a home for William, then find a suit...

And there, down the tiny cobbled street of Blandings Magna, was the suit of her dreams. Half-sleeves, round collar, knee-length skirt, all in a delicious slubbed silk... Of course, it was on somebody. It was on a blonde with a spectacular figure—someone who probably looked chic even in a T-shirt. The woman stood by a black Jaguar, perched precariously on absurd stiletto heels—completely unsuitable for the country, of course, but this didn’t occur to Rachel. She stared open-mouthed for an instant, then began gravitating down the street towards the Garment of her Dreams. So there was such a thing as love at first sight. She’d always wondered.

As she drifted forward, wide-eyed, someone slammed down the boot of the car and a man stood up. An earthquake would not have distracted Rachel from contemplation of the divine object—the way she felt now, she wouldn’t have been surprised if the earth had moved—but the man who came into view pulled her up short.

If the woman seemed out of place in a small, drowsy country town, the man was even more so. He had dark blond hair, very brilliant, rather mocking blue eyes in a deeply tanned face, and a mouth that looked as though it could be hard, though at the moment it was quirking with amusement. He was conventionally dressed in a dark suit, but everything about him said that here was someone who went after what he wanted; if convention was between him and it, convention had better get out of his way.

He was certainly very good-looking, but it was not this that made Rachel stare. Something about him was oddly familiar—hadn’t she seen those deep blue eyes before?

‘Any luck, Grant?’ the woman asked in a husky drawl. And suddenly Rachel placed him. It was Grant Mallett, of course—but what was he doing in a suit and tie? Rachel’s idea of keeping up with current events was to read Vogue and Scientific American, but even she had heard of Grant Mallett.

He’d been labelled everything from eco-warrior to rabble-rouser, but Rachel wasn’t fooled; this was a man who landed in trouble the way some men just naturally ended up in the nearest bar. If a tribe was being pushed out of its territory by loggers in the heart of the Amazonian rainforest, you could bet Grant Mallett had just happened to canoe a couple of hundred miles up an obscure tributary to turn up in the middle of the fracas. If poachers went after ivory in a Kenyan game reserve, it would just naturally be on the night when Grant Mallett had gone out on safari and accidentally got left behind.

He was persona non grata in eight separate countries, including his own; a man who’d been cursed in thirty or forty languages by officials who were ‘just doing their job’; naturally the British Press adored him. And he was definitely—but definitely—not Rachel’s type.

Rachel could get in quite enough trouble on her own account without someone like Mr Six Adventures Before Breakfast here. Go around with someone like that and you wouldn’t just find yourself standing in a swamp all your life—you’d find that the swamp was infested with piranhas. Thank goodness she was engaged to Driscoll—sensible, mature, reliable Driscoll. But what in heaven’s name could this lightning-rod in human form be doing in Blandings Magna? And what was the lovely blonde doing with him? It was, in Rachel’s opinion, an unnecessary risk to a perfectly good suit.

‘Sorry, Olivia, we must have left it back at the house,’ said Mr Mallett. Something in his voice suggested that the ‘we’ was for politeness’ sake.

Olivia shrugged. ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, darling. Let’s just have a quick look in this antique shop before it closes, shall we? They might have something that would do for the private part of the house.’

Most of the residents of the village had acquired a pet from Morrison’s in the last month or so. Rachel now realised suddenly, joyfully, that one had not. Joyce, in the antique shop, was new to the district; she had a soft spot for William; probably she’d be only too pleased to have him for her very own.

She followed the couple into Blandings Magna Antiques.

‘It’s absolutely thrilling that you’ve decided to go through with it,’ said the woman, in a bored, drawling voice strangely at odds with her enthusiastic words. In anyone else Rachel might have thought it affected, but in her eyes the owner of The Suit could do no wrong. That was what she wanted to be like. Suave. Sophisticated. Someone who didn’t even own a pair of thigh-high rubber boots, never mind wear them. ‘Daddy says you might even get a knighthood, did I tell you?’

‘Oh. Hell. That is, terrific—but there’s many a slip,’ Mallett said hopefully. ‘It may yet come to grief. I thought the countryside had high unemployment, but I can’t even find a secretary...’

He joined her to look at a cherrywood dresser.

Rachel stopped, starry-eyed, on the threshold. That was what she’d be! She’d be a secretary! She saw, in an instant, a vision of herself in preposterous heels and a sophisticated suit, seated at a desk; air-conditioning would cool her in the summer, central heating warm her in winter. A coffee-maker in a beautifully appointed kitchenette would dispense freshly made coffee from freshly ground beans, while somebody who wanted an academic career stood in swamps and toughed it out with a battered Thermos.

While she stood at the door revolving visions of a wall-to-wall-carpeted, mosquito-free environment, the couple made its way slowly about the room, Olivia commenting on each item of furniture in exhaustive detail. Sometimes the flow was broken by a comment shot to Joyce—usually a disparaging remark about the price. Or sometimes a question was put to Mallett—but Mallett, who had always been decisive, indeed obdurate to the point of insanity on the question of, say, conditions in a refugee camp, now only shrugged and deferred to the views of his companion.

‘Whatever you think,’ was his constant reply. ‘I don’t know much about it; it looks all right to me; the money’s not a problem if you want it.’

‘But Grant,’ Olivia protested at last, ‘it’s not just for me, it’s for us. Surely you must have some opinion.’

Even Rachel, preoccupied with the double problems of a home for William and her future career as the perfect secretary, could not repress a certain interest in this development. Mallett had replied politely to all the questions put to him, but it was obvious enough that he had been fighting down colossal boredom with the subject. He certainly seemed the last person in the world to make the beautifully finished creature beside him happy. Were they about to discover their mistake? Would he feel trapped? The couple had stopped by a sideboard with a mirror set in the back; Rachel got a clear view of the rueful, humorous look in the blue eyes—no hint of regret there.

‘Olivia, my opinion is that the place will look a lot better if you follow your instincts instead of listening to someone who thinks a tent with a folding chair is over fumished. I’m pretty certain the science park will work in that location; I’m sure the house will work well for conferences, and I’m sure we can be comfortable in it. I’m glad to be settling down at last, but I haven’t got out of the habit of expecting to fit my living quarters in a rucksack. I keep thinking you’d be lucky to get that thing a mile in a jungle, which I admit is ridiculous when it will never have to leave the dining room—just give me a while to get used to the idea of having a dining room, will you?’

Olivia shook her head. ‘Where would you be without me?’ she asked.

‘I can’t imagine.’ He smiled down at her, shaking his head.

Even Rachel, who knew her type—and Grant Mallett wasn’t it—had to admit that the smile was pretty devastating. But Olivia seemed oddly immune; she raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow, and turned her attention again to the sideboard.

Rachel was about to return to her daydream when she was interrupted by Joyce, a woman with pepper-and-salt hair and the rather sardonic look of someone who has spent a lot of time in the antique trade. She’d been doing something or other with paperwork, in between replies to Olivia, just to take the pressure off the visitors; now a chat with Rachel looked just as good a way to put potential clients at ease. ‘Rachel!’ she exclaimed with pleasure. Her eyes fell to the box. ‘Don’t tell me—it’s not William?’ Joyce had heard all about Mr Morrison’s lack of enthusiasm for innovations at the Feed and Supply.

“Fraid so,’ said Rachel, clearing her head of a scene in which she opened the morning post with an enamelled letter opener elegantly held in a perfectly manicured hand. ‘The thing is that Basil and Stephen and Christopher all had such striking colouring that they went straight away, whereas poor old William...’

Joyce shook her head sympathetically. ‘So you’re keeping him yourself?’

‘Well...’

‘Let’s have a look.’ Joyce took the box, slid back the top, and looked fondly down. ‘Isn’t he a lamb?’ she said dotingly. William had just eaten and was sitting drowsily in one corner, but this was nothing to the eye of love.

‘I was actually wondering whether you wouldn’t like to have him?’ said Rachel, recognising her cue. But the reply was one she’d heard dozens of times before.

‘I’d love to,’ Joyce said regretfully. ‘But I really don’t think Jack would stand for it. You know what men are like. And it would simply wreak havoc if I kept him in the shop.’

Rachel sighed. She could hardly complain. She did know what men were like. Hadn’t she asked Driscoll? And hadn’t Driscoll said no?

She realised, suddenly, that The Suit was coming towards them. Mallett—who needed a secretary, and didn’t realize that one was standing in that very room—was examining a rather moth-eaten tapestry on the far wall.

‘I’m interested in the dining-room chairs,’ said Olivia. ‘Isn’t there some sort of reduction for the set?’

Rachel tactfully withdrew. Time to approach her new employer.

‘Excuse me...’ she began.

‘Yes?’ He turned to look down her; one preposterous eyebrow shot up at the T-shirt; a smile lurked on his mouth. He wasn’t her type, of course, but she had to admit that he was an eyeful.

‘I was wondering—’

And suddenly, with dreadful clarity, she heard a sentence from across the room.

‘What’s in the box? Is it a kitten?’

Rachel turned just in time to see Olivia take the box from Joyce and hold it up playfully. Suddenly, chillingly, it occurred to her that Olivia might be the kind of woman who thought it was engaging to take a small, fluffy animal and put it on her shoulder or in her hair. Something in the charming way she had just tossed back her blonde hair suggested the worst.

Olivia had stopped trying to see through the tiny holes; she was now tugging at the lid of the box.

‘Please leave him alone,’ said Rachel hastily.

‘Don’t be silly. I love animals,’ Olivia said sharply. The lid came suddenly off the box.

With almost comical haste Olivia’s head shot back as she recoiled instinctively with an exclamation of disgust. One of the preposterous heels skidded on the polished floor, then caught in a knot in the wood; the hand holding the box jerked, and the hapless William shot into the air, then fell to cling precariously to the lovely suit.

‘A-a-agh!’ A terrible shriek split the air. Olivia was brushing frantically downwards with the box.

‘Oh, do be careful!’ cried Rachel, rushing forward. But before she had come to the rescue the woman had at last knocked William to the ground. He slid smartly across the waxed boards, straight past Rachel, to bounce back against the wall at Mallett’s feet. He lay there for a moment or two, dazed but apparently uninjured, then began to hop clumsily away.

‘Kill it, Grant!’ shouted Olivia. ‘Kill it! Kill it!’

And to Rachel’s horror Mallett automatically turned, looked round for some sort of weapon, found none, and raised a foot.

There was only one thing to be done.

Rachel hurled herself at him in a tackle.

In the ordinary way, of course, there was no way that Rachel could have brought down a man a good six inches taller and fifty pounds or so heavier than herself; but he was off balance, one leg raised, the better to stomp on William. They toppled to the ground with a momentum that made the floor shake.

There was a moment’s dead silence.

Out of the corner of her eye Rachel saw Joyce take back the box and scoop William into it.

One worry taken care of. Well, at least she had his attention.

‘I understand you’re looking for a secretary,’ said Rachel.

The man beneath her, who seemed to be a mass of solid muscle, shifted slightly, so that Rachel slid from his muscular back to the floor. It occurred to her, belatedly, that it might not have been the best moment to bring up possible employment.

In a sudden, swift movement, he sat up and fixed her with an impossibly blue gaze. ‘A simple secretary by day... What’s your name?’

‘Rachel.’

‘A simple secretary by day, the scourge of criminals by night, Rachel, the Girl Spider, was to outward appearances like any other girl,’ he told her solemnly. ‘Little did her unsuspecting colleagues suspect that that demure exterior concealed a relentless crusader against all tramplers of the innocent and defenceless... I think I was thinking of someone with more conventional qualifications. Ever thought of working as a bodyguard?’

He wasn’t her type, but Rachel couldn’t help but be warmed by the laughter in the blue eyes. He was laughing at her, but he could have taken it worse. And he hadn’t said no—at least, he hadn’t said anything that she had to take as no for an answer.

‘I’d rather be a secretary,’ she said eagerly. ‘And I’ve got lots of qualifications. I’m sorry I jumped on you, but I was afraid you’d kill William.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ The scornful voice was Olivia’s. ‘What the blazes were you doing carrying something like that around in a box? I could have been killed!’

Rachel jumped to her feet, followed, with lazy grace, by her victim. ‘No, you couldn’t,’ she said crossly. Not even from The Glorious Suit would she take that kind of nonsense.

‘He’s a Mexican tarantula,’ she explained patiently. ‘So even if he did bite you it wouldn’t be dangerous, and he wasn’t going to bite you because he’d just been fed and was sleepy. You might have killed him, dropping him so carelessly. They’re very fragile, you know. Their bodies are just a brittle shell, so if you drop one it can crack and die.’

Rachel scowled. ‘I think it’s a bit much to kill an innocent spider that wasn’t doing anyone any harm,’ she added irritably. ‘You wouldn’t kill a dog for being in the same room with you, even if it could bite. Why should William be any different?’

Olivia came to take Mallett’s arm. He put it round her, and she nestled inside—rather implausibly, Rachel thought. ‘That’s nonsense,’ she said faintly. ‘I was terrified. Thank God you were here, Grant.’

This touching scene was interrupted by Joyce, who said practically, ‘But Rachel’s perfectly right, you know. He’s not at all aggressive—a perfect lamb, really.’ By way of demonstration she took William carefully from the box and placed him coolly on the flat of her hand.

Even now—jobless, and with a home still to find for William—Rachel could not help watching with a thrill of pride.

She’d trained as a zoologist, then specialised for years in ecology. When she’d tried to leave the field the feed and supply shop hadn’t been her first, or her second, or even her fifth choice job. When Mr Morrison had had to go to Spain unexpectedly, however, she’d been staying with her aunt and had agreed to help out.

In the owner’s absence Rachel had begun a sideline dealing in unwanted pets—creatures people had impulsively acquired and lost interest in, and which might otherwise have been abandoned. These had included several tarantulas, whose owners had got bored, and gradually Rachel had built up a small insect zoo.

She’d discovered that nine out of ten people seemed to dislike spiders in degrees ranging from mild distaste to severe phobia—and this in a country where all spiders were harmless and only a few were even capable of piercing human skin.

By her third week in the shop Rachel had been giving classes to people who wanted to overcome this, on the principle that anyone who could get used to a tarantula was unlikely to be worried by the odd spider in the bath. She’d even taken William to classes in local schools. The result was that the population of Blandings Magna was probably the freest of prejudice against spiders of any in the kingdom.

Joyce had been so nervous of spiders that she’d sworn it was wrecking her marriage—she’d had Jack inspect every room before she went in, to make sure the coast was clear, had been paralysed with fear if a spider appeared in the bath, had hardly been able to go into the cobwebby attics and cellars where some of the best antiques turned up. And now look at her! No, come what might, Rachel knew she’d used her time well.

Olivia did not reply. She was still cowering against Mallett’s muscular chest. Rachel was capable of being endlessly patient with people with genuine phobias, but she had spent too much time with them not to know the difference between the real thing and a fake. The woman’s original shock had been real, but now she seemed to be quite coolly turning it to her own purposes.

‘It’s all right, darling.’ Mallett stroked the blonde hair, his voice gentle; whatever her scepticism about Olivia, Rachel gave him full marks for his treatment of someone he thought genuinely terrified. ‘You probably weren’t in any danger, but I know they can be horrible to look at.’ He glanced at Joyce. ‘We take your point, but I think it might be better if you put him back in the box.’

It seemed to Rachel that the conversation was drifting away from the subject of real importance. ‘I’d be a wonderful secretary,’ she told him. ‘You just said you couldn’t find one. Why couldn’t I be yours?’

Olivia burst into scornful laughter.

‘I’m afraid I need someone familiar with scientific terminology,’ Mallett said tactfully. ‘It goes beyond the ordinary secretarial skills.’

‘But I am familiar with scientific technology. I—I studied biology at school,’ said Rachel. Perfectly true, as far as it went. If she went any further and told him about all her degrees and research papers she knew what would happen: she’d find herself standing thigh-deep in a swamp before you could say Jack Robinson.

‘He also needs someone with a rather different style of presentation,’ Olivia said sarcastically.

This was a subject dear to Rachel’s heart. ‘Well, naturally I wouldn’t dress like this for the office,’ she said. ‘I’d wear a suit. One like yours would be just right.’

Olivia’s eyes widened, and then she gave a rather malicious smile. ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she drawled. ‘Karl is such a genius. I’ll give you the number of his showroom; maybe you can drop in next time you’re in Paris.’

Rachel flushed as the implication of this sank in. ‘Well—maybe I’d have to settle for a cheap imitation,’ she said gallantly.

‘Could be,’ Olivia said coolly. She glanced at Joyce. ‘Well, thanks for showing us round.’ Her eyes fell pointedly to the box in which William was once again immured. ‘I don’t think we’ll be needing those chairs, but I’ll let you know. Come on, Grant.’

Mallett gave Rachel a wink. ‘Chin up,’ he said. ‘I’m sure the right job will come along.’

The door closed behind them with a tinkle.

‘I’m awfully sorry; I lost you a sale, didn’t I?’ said Rachel.

Joyce shrugged. ‘Well, probably, but they’re lovely chairs—I’d hate to think of them wasted on her. The thing is, though, what on earth is Driscoll going to say?’