Читать книгу Indecent Deception - Линн Грэхем, LYNNE GRAHAM - Страница 6

There was a horrible hiatus. Karen hovered the way impressionable females usually did in Blaze’s vicinity. Possibly she recognised him. Rarely out of the society pages and the gossip columns, Blaze was very well-known. His life in the fast lane was notorious.

‘I’ll see you later, Karen,’ Chrissy said hurriedly.

As the other girl left with visible reluctance, Blaze strolled deeper into the room, scanning the sparse, worn furniture and the few shabby toys littering the cramped floor space. With a grace of movement that was inbred, he swung back to look at Chrissy, a wry twist to his expressive mouth. ‘I suppose I should have been prepared for this scenario,’ he drawled. ‘But I wasn’t. I was still thinking of you as a kid.’

‘I’m almost twenty-one.’ As she spoke, Rosie was struggling to get down, and reluctantly she bent to lower the wriggling toddler to the floor. She was praying that Blaze would leave, couldn’t imagine what strange quirk had made him follow her upstairs.

‘Still practically jailbait,’ he mused half under his breath.

Her cheeks fired scarlet, her mouth tightening. Did he automatically divide all women into two camps? Those he could sleep with and those he thought he shouldn’t sleep with? The idea revolted her, but it also resurrected cringing recollections of their last encounter. Hurriedly, she buried her mind’s urge to relive the past. In preference she reflected grimly on Blaze’s ‘love them and leave them’ reputation.

He was an unashamed user and abuser of the female sex, she thought in disgust. Once she had believed that her sister, Elaine, was too calculating to be hurt by any man. But Elaine had fallen hard for Blaze. After a brief whirl, he had ditched her again with savage unconcern, devastating her pride and driving her into a face-saving marriage with a man she didn’t love. Her over-confident sister had become just another line in a gossip column, another notch on his bedpost, and for the first time in her life Chrissy had felt sympathy for Elaine.

‘So this is the reason you can’t go home.’ Astonishingly, Blaze crouched down on Rosie’s level and solemnly accepted the scruffy pink rabbit he was being invited to admire.

‘Wosee’s wabbit,’ Rosie told him importantly.

‘I love wabbits,’ Blaze teased, the most natural, utterly breathtaking smile warming his darkly tanned features. The usual chill and cynicism etched there was briefly put to flight. As he ruffled Rosie’s black curls, he straightened again.

Bemused by this totally unexpected display of humanity, Chrissy dragged disobedient eyes from the wide, blatantly sensual arc of his mouth. Her chest felt oddly tight as she sucked in oxygen, suddenly short of breath.

Blaze sighed. ‘It’s probably a very stupid question, but how the hell did you land yourself in a mess like this?’

He had simply assumed that Rosie was her child. But then, everybody did. In the circumstances it was a natural assumption, and she could not possibly trust him with the truth. Rosie was her half-sister, the last pathetic footnote to her late mother’s ‘marriage’ to Dennis Carruthers.

‘I think you should leave,’ she said stiffly.

‘You’re right. I should walk back out of here and forget I ever left the car,’ Blaze murmured grimly. ‘But I have the hideous suspicion that all this would travel with me. Clearly you’re broke, and now you’re also unemployed’

‘And whose f-fault is that?’ she cut in shrilly.

‘I’m not in the habit of censoring speech in private conversation,’ he countered without an ounce of embarrassment. ‘But if I said one thing that was unfounded on fact, you’re welcome to call me to account over it.’

The invitation merely made her turn away in sharp distress. Dear God, how she loathed him! But he had uttered not a single untruth. The bald facts were exactly as he had stated them. Nouveau riche and painfully rough round the edges, the Hamiltons had certainly failed to merge tastefully with the surrounding countryside. Her father had loved putting on vulgar displays of his new-found wealth. He had thought that he needed to impress people to win respect. But all that he had won was derision.

‘I gather that you have to get out of here,’ Blaze prompted shortly. ‘Have you found somewhere else to go?’

‘No.’ The admission was dredged from her. Not that he needed it. He would know as well as she did that she had no hope of finding somewhere else without cold, hard cash to put down in advance.

London was a terrifyingly anonymous place to live in without friends. Those Chrissy had made at college had swiftly drifted away when she was forced to drop out of her teacher-training course and shoulder full-time care and responsibility for her little sister. In one gigantic bound, Chrissy had gone from teenage freedom to adult reality. She had grown up ten years in the first six months.

A succinct and unsuppressed swear word fell from his lips. ‘What are you planning to do this weekend?’ he demanded harshly. ‘Set up home on the street?’

‘We’ll manage,’ she muttered tightly.

‘Like you’re managing now?’ he derided cruelly. ‘Have you asked your father for help?’

‘I haven’t spoken to him in three years,’ she confided unsteadily. ‘He was f-furious when I moved in with Mum down here. He doesn’t know about Rosie and it wouldn’t make any difference if he did. As far as he’s concerned, I betrayed him when I went to Mum—’

‘Your brother? Your sister?’ Blaze cut in. ‘Surely one of them—?’

Chrissy vented a humourless laugh at the ridiculous idea of either Rory or Elaine taking up the cudgels on their behalf or even putting their hands into their pockets. Rory lived in California now with his wife and family and, just like Elaine, he had been appalled by what their mother had done. Neither had been willing to forgive Belle. Even when she was lying in Intensive Care, her life expectancy measured in hours, Elaine had refused Chrissy’s pleas for her to come down to London.

Chrissy had never got the chance to tell them about Rosie and, in any case, the revelation would only provoke horror and disgust. Rosie was Belle’s daughter by another man, the result of an illegal union that had made headlines for days in the tabloids when Dennis was arrested. After all, Belle hadn’t been the only woman he had deceived into a quick trip to the altar. There had been two others, neither of whom he had bothered to divorce.

‘I never got on that well with Dad anyway,’ Chrissy pointed out, eager to close the subject because she didn’t want to tell lies.

‘Who would?’ Blaze breathed with chilling hauteur. ‘He’d sell his granny to cannibals to make a fast buck.’

As he made the grim assurance, cold, clear anger lightened his eyes and tautened his sculpted cheekbones. Chrissy stared, puzzled by his vehemence. What had her father done to rouse his ire? But before she could voice her curiosity Blaze shrugged back a silk shirt-cuff and glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got a business meeting in an hour.’

‘I’ll post that money to you,’ she said again.

‘Forget it,’ he advised carelessly. ‘Consider it small compensation for the loss of your job.’

A painful flush stained her pallor. ‘I don’t want your ch-charity!’

‘Think of it as conscience money.’ Narrowed very blue eyes lingered on the betraying shimmer of tears below her lashes, the defeat slumping her shoulders. ‘I owe you and right now you need a helping hand,’ he intoned with a faintly scornful twist of his mouth as if he couldn’t quite credit how anyone of intelligence could end up in such a situation.

‘I don’t w-want your helping hand! I don’t want your lousy money!’ Chrissy spat.

‘I’m afraid you’re stuck with it,’ Blaze informed her flatly. ‘If it’s not too rude a question...where’s Rosie’s father?’

‘Behind bars!’ Chrissy told him fiercely.

‘In prison?’ She really had his attention now. For a split-second, he actually looked shocked. Blaze, the unshockable, shocked. Lush black lashes, inherited along with his golden skin tone from his Spanish father, briefly veiled his astonishingly noticeable eyes from her view. ‘When you screw up, you go the full yard, don’t you?’ he murmured.

She couldn’t quite believe her ears, and then she remembered that this was Blaze, who followed few of the rules that governed other people’s behaviour. He was prone to saying exactly what he thought with a brand of devastating honesty that frequently unnerved those around him. He had no time for civilised dissimulation. His raw energy always had an edge of impatience, as if restlessness ran in his bloodstream.

‘I want you to go,’ she said.

He studied her with grim detachment. She was at the end of her rope. He knew it, and she hated him for it. ‘Either you go home and crawl or you fling yourself on the tender mercies of the social services,’ he drawled. ‘You can’t make it without somebody’s help—’

‘Will you get out of here?’ Chrissy wrenched open the door with violence. She was shaking with the force of her emotions.

For a split-second, Blaze stilled. He stared down into her blazing green eyes, and for the first time that day they really connected. She fell into bottomless blue like a novice swimmer and forgot to breathe, her throat tightening, an electrifying tension shooting through her slim body.

He ran a blunt forefinger along the ripe fullness of her soft lower lip, and his touch was a flame dancing provocation on her too sensitive skin. ‘You are extraordinarily intense. You feel, you really do feel. That’s bound to get you into tight corners. Intensity is a passport to pain. Don’t you know that yet?’

Burnt by that near caress and his proximity, she leapt back, staggered and dazed by the sensations she had briefly experienced. If it was at all possible, her hatred intensified to the brink of explosion. His pity blistered into her skin like acid. ‘Go on, g-get out!’ she practically screamed at him.

When he had gone, the room was strangely shrunken in its emptiness. She blinked, shook her head uncertainly, and shivered. Once before he had made her feel like that. Trapped, hypnotised, lost. It was petrifying, overwhelming. Self could not seem to exist when he came too close. But this time, at least, he hadn’t lost his temper.

Few were aware of it, but a seething black temper lurked behind those stunningly blue eyes and that cool half-smile. Once, just once, she had fallen foul of that temper by accidentally stumbling into the firing line. But he clearly didn’t remember that...oh, no, why should he? It was only little Chrissy he had bitten to the bone with that cruel whiplash tongue, only little Chrissy, offspring of the infamously vulgar Hamilton clan. Why should he remember half frightening her out of her wits?

She was dismayed by the emotion shuddering through her in great waves, could hardly believe that she could still feel so strongly after all this time. Yet she did. Once he had touched her with raw sexual derision, just once, when she was seventeen and stupidly, recklessly naïve. It had been over in seconds but she had never forgotten the humiliation of his drunken assumption that she was throwing herself at his head as so many other women had.

Nor had she forgotten the resounding force of his savage rejection. Without ever issuing the smallest invitation to him, she had been flung away, thrust bodily out of reach as if she was too utterly revolting to be borne. Reeling with shame and confusion at what he had made her feel, she had then been forced to withstand a verbal beating into the bargain.

‘If you don’t watch out, you’ll turn into a tart like that sister of yours!’ Blaze had intoned viciously. ‘I may have been a few times round the block but I do have some standards!’

Nor had the brutality ended there on that unforgivable insult to Elaine. With an explicit lack of inhibition, Blaze had told her what he thought of her and what would happen if she continued on the promiscuous path he had so ridiculously imagined her to be embarking on. If anything, the moral lecture from his immoral corner had been salt rubbed into the wound.

That he could have thought even for a conceited moment that she wanted him...that she was just another bimbo willing to do absolutely anything to get him. The recollection still made her feel sick. She had not had a teenage crush on Blaze Kenyon. She had never, ever denied that physically he was almost unbelievably attractive. But she had never been able to stand him. As a human being he scored nil all the way down the line. Like a chalk scraping down a blackboard, he set her teeth on edge.

Yet the split-second savagery of his mouth on hers had devastated her. She had felt her own response with disbelief and horror. The shame of that momentary self-betrayal had been agonising. And, linked with his derision, the agony had become anguish. He might as well have stripped her naked and tossed her into a crowded street to be laughed at. Endowed with all the sensitivity he lacked, Chrissy had felt suicidal.

‘So what next?’ Karen grimaced, shrugging into her coat and hauling her suitcase on to the landing. ‘You worry me to death.’

‘If I go to the social services,’ Chrissy whispered tautly, ‘they’ll probably put Rosie in care.’

‘Stuff!’ Karen said. ‘They’ll stick you in a hostel or a B and B.’

‘I don’t have any right to keep her,’ Chrissy reminded her painfully. ‘And if they ask Dennis what he wants, he’s sure to say adoption. He never wanted her in the first place.’

‘What’s it got to do with him?’ Karen snorted.

‘He is her father. He’s got more rights than I’ve got...’

‘She’s a sweet kid, but I don’t know why you want to be lumbered at your age,’ the older girl admitted bluntly. ‘I mean, she really isn’t your responsibility. And let’s face it, kiddo...what can you give her?’

‘Karen!’ Chrissy was shaken and hurt by that forthright assessment.

‘Look, this isn’t easy to say, but adoption would give her a good home and two parents. Be practical, Chrissy.’ Karen sighed ruefully. ‘I can’t cut it here without a job. That’s why I’m going back to Liverpool. How do you expect to make it with a child?’

‘Other people do!’

‘They have to. You don’t. Rosie does have other options,’ Karen stressed. ‘You have to face facts some time. Even if you do get another job, you won’t make enough to cover childcare. You just haven’t got the earning power.’

It was a relief when Karen’s cab arrived. Like it or not, the other woman had faced her with certain inescapable facts. Karen had looked after Rosie for a pittance and the arrangement had only been temporary. Sooner or later, Chrissy would have been faced with finding a replacement, and her salary would not have stretched to the going rate. Not if she had wanted them to eat as well.

But Karen also made her see something that she had refused to see before. Was she being selfish in her desire to keep Rosie? Rosie didn’t have enough clothes or toys or stimulation. All those things cost money they didn’t have. Perhaps worst of all was the acknowledgement that she couldn’t even give her sister security. She didn’t even know where they’d be sleeping in forty-eight hours’ time. What sort of life was that to give Rosie? Didn’t she deserve more?

Chrissy was afraid of approaching the social services. She was not Rosie’s legal guardian. Apart from the registration of her birth, the authorities had had no further notice of her sister’s existence. They had moved three times while Belle was still alive, on each occasion to smaller, cheaper apartments. Her mother, stubbornly set on denying Rosie’s existence, had refused to take up her entitlement to child benefit. The very frequency of their changes of address had put paid to any further enquiries from the powers-that-be.

So far they had fallen through the system...but what would happen if they were forced to seek help? Would she lose Rosie? That fear had prevented Chrissy from attempting to put her relationship with her baby sister on a proper legal footing. Furthermore, as she had told Karen, Dennis would be sure to be asked what he wanted, and Dennis, who had been furious when her mother became pregnant, would be certain to opt for adoption.

Chrissy didn’t believe that she could love a child of her own body more than she loved Rosie. Belle had never come to terms with what Dennis had done to her. It was the pregnancy which had killed Belle. Not so much the strain of carrying a baby at the age of forty-five as the shame of all that had gone before. Dennis’s rejection when he’d realised that her mother was running out of money. His arrest, the publicity. The horrific sense of humiliation with which Belle had endured her pregnancy.

After the birth, Chrissy had hoped that her mother would recover. But she hadn’t. Sinking deeper and deeper into depression, Belle had lost all pride in her appearance and had done the barest minimum necessary in caring for Rosie. She had refused to see a doctor. In desperation, Chrissy had approached the doctor herself, begging him to visit. Unfortunately, Belle had put on a terrific act for his benefit, and after his departure there had been the most terrible row and Belle had threatened to throw Chrissy out if she ever interfered again.

Inevitably her mother had neglected her own health, and chest problems that had troubled her in earlier years had returned. A bout of flu had turned into pneumonia. She had been rushed into hospital but it had been too late.

Belle had had no will to fight for survival. She had simply drifted away. At the time of her death, they had been on the brink of moving again, and after the funeral Chrissy had gone ahead with the move. Only the doctor had enquired about Rosie’s welfare, and Chrissy had lied. She had told him that she would take her sister home to her family and, not knowing the circumstances of Rosie’s birth, he had not questioned that story.

At half-eight the next morning, a loud knock landed on the door. Opening it a crack, Chrissy’s troubled eyes focused incredulously on Blaze Kenyon. Taking advantage of her bemusement, he pressed the door wide and strolled in.

‘Have you had breakfast yet?’

‘Breakfast?’ she echoed foolishly.

‘I didn’t want to miss you. That’s why I came early.’ He hunkered down on his knees to respond to Rosie’s rush in his direction. ‘Friendly little scrap, isn’t she? Have you got a sitter for her?’

‘No.’ In a complete daze, Chrissy stared at him, wincing as her little sister flung herself at him with gay abandon. ‘Friendly’ was an understatement. Rosie was all over him like a rash. Men were almost non-existent in her world. Blaze was an object of curiosity.

‘Carry...carry Wosee,’ she demanded.

‘Hold on a minute,’ Blaze drawled as he dug a mobile phone out of the holster on his belt. Calmly holding it out of Rosie’s reach, he punched out a number and ordered a cab to their address.

‘W-why do you want a cab?’ Chrissy enquired.

Blaze swung Rosie into his arms and vaulted upright again. ‘There’s no room for a child in my car.’

Chrissy folded her arms. ‘But we’re not going anywhere.’

‘I’m taking you out to breakfast. Does the scrap need a bottle or something?’ He surveyed Rosie uncertainly.

‘She’s nearly two and a half,’ Chrissy said drily.

A broad shoulder sheathed in a black cashmere sweater moved in a careless shrug. ‘Children are a closed book to me.’

Maybe he thought they were in need of a good square meal. She couldn’t think of any other explanation for his arrival. Her cheeks flaming, she said, ‘Look, we’re not going anywhere. We don’t need breakfast—’

‘You’re so thin you look anorexic. You’re not, are you?’ he prompted with a sudden frown.

‘Of course I’m n-not,’ she snapped in frustration.

A mocking grin slanted his mouth. ‘I couldn’t cope with an anorexic. I’m crazy about food.’

It didn’t show anywhere on that long, lean body. He didn’t carry an ounce of surplus flesh. His black jeans hugged sleek thighs and narrow hips, his sweater delineating a muscular chest and a stomach as flat as a washboard. About there she dragged her gaze away from him, angry with herself.

Blaze, at Rosie’s prompting, was obediently retrieving her rabbit from the floor and receiving a beatific smile in reward. Chrissy couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. There was no sign of irritation or impatience in his dark, mobile features.

‘I’ve got a job offer for you,’ he told her almost in an aside.

Chrissy tensed like a greyhound scenting a hare. ‘Where? Who with?’ she demanded.

‘I talk better on a full stomach. Don’t get excited,’ he warned. ‘It’s not in London and it might not appeal to you.’

So this was why he was here. His conscience had pushed him into further effort on their behalf. She reddened fiercely. It was petty of her but he was the last male in the world she wanted help from. It smacked too much of noblesse oblige and stung her pride. But then what was pride when it came to Rosie? And why was she getting excited? She might not get the job whatever it was and, even if she did, where would they live and what about Rosie? One problem simply led to another.

In the cab, Rosie stayed anchored to Blaze. She sat there very solemn and quiet and on her very best behaviour, but no way would she return to Chrissy.

‘No...no want Kissy,’ she said quite clearly.

‘Kissy?’ Blaze cast Chrissy a sudden lancing look of derision. ‘She’s not Kissy. She’s Mummy,’ he informed Rosie firmly. ‘Mummy. Say it.’

Rosie obliged.

‘What the heck do you th-think you’re doing?’ Chrissy spat at him furiously.

‘I’ve got no time for women who won’t let their children call them Mother—’

‘It’s nothing to do with you!’ Chrissy vented in an explosive response. ‘How dare you interfere—?’

‘I know exactly what I’m talking about.’ He was quite unrepentant. ‘She needs to know who you are.’

Chrissy bit down on her tongue. She was angry, but did it matter? After today, she was unlikely to see him again, and Rosie would soon forget. Since she couldn’t trust him with the truth, she would keep quiet.

He took them to a really fancy hotel where the head waiter treated them to an incredible amount of personal attention. As soon as Rosie was settled, Chrissy unleashed her impatience. ‘The job,’ she reminded him.

‘Live-in. Child not objected to. It’s a big house,’ he volunteered, lounging back in his chair to regard her with clear, cool eyes. ‘One permanent occupant, occasional guests.’

Her brow furrowed. This she had not expected. ‘A private house?’

He nodded.

‘Where?’

‘Your home stomping grounds.’

Chrissy tautened in dismay. That was equally unexpected. ‘How close?’

‘About five miles from Southfork.’

Chrissy reddened. Her father had christened his home The Towers. It hadn’t really matched up with the Spanish arches and the lamp-posts lining the drive. The locals had gone one better.

‘What’s the job?’ she asked anxiously, striving not to think of what it would be like to be working so close to her own home.

Blaze was tucking into an enormous fry-up with gusto. There was silence for several minutes. She could have screamed. He had her hanging on his every word. Finally, he let his knife and fork rest and lifted his coffee instead. ‘Cook...housekeeper...general maid of all work. I’ve got to be honest. The job description would have to be fairly elastic. If you can’t be flexible, it won’t suit you.’

‘Are you telling me that I’m likely to be worked to death?’

‘No. Other staff will be brought in if it’s necessary. Right now, there’s no need for them,’ he asserted. ‘The house is being extensively renovated. It’s in one hell of a mess and mostly unfurnished. The owner hasn’t moved in yet and you would be left to your own devices quite a lot. There is a phone, though, and the use of a car. So what do you think?’

‘Any idea of the salary?’

He came back with a very generous quote. ‘Not a lot, I know, but you wouldn’t have any bills to worry about.’

Chrissy grinned. ‘Are you kidding? I’d be in clover.’ And then she strove to suppress her excitement and be sensible. It was too good to be true. There had to be more drawbacks than he had mentioned. ‘Why am I getting a chance?’

‘Someone else backed out at the last minute. Took one look at the state of the house and said, ‘No way’,’ Blaze revealed.

‘I have no references—’

‘If you can cook worth a damn, you’re in,’ he assured her.

She bit her lip. ‘What’s he like...? The owner, I mean.’

Blaze lazed back in his seat with a reflective air. A satiric brow elevated. ‘He’s not likely to come creeping into your bed in the middle of the night, if that’s what you mean—’

‘Th-that thought hadn’t even occurred to me!’

He raked grimly amused eyes over her pink cheeks. ‘He does have a sex life, though.’

Chrissy studied her plate. ‘H-hardly anything to do with me.’

‘He likes a quiet life in every other way. Prefers horses to people, spends most of his time outdoors. He’s not fussy about his surroundings. You won’t be expected to polish the furniture to a mirror shine—’

‘If he gets married all that will change,’ she mused absently.

‘He’ll never get married,’ Blaze countered with a sardonic smile. ‘No reason to, every reason not to.’

‘How soon could I get an interview?’ Chrissy pressed.

‘You’ve just had it,’ Blaze told her carelessly, his attention switching to Rosie, who was striving hopelessly to stretch a short arm far enough from her high-chair to filch a mushroom off his plate.

‘Stop that, Rosie. You can’t have it,’ Chrissy admonished by rote. ‘Are you saying that I can have the job on your recommendation?’ she said, turning back to Blaze.

Rosie got her mushroom.

‘If you want it, it’s yours.’

‘He must be a very good friend.’ As bait, it failed, drawing no response. Sensing that Blaze was becoming bored with the subject, Chrissy asked, ‘How soon could I start?’

‘As soon as you can get yourself up there.’

Rosie was now casting languishing looks at the fried tomato.

Blaze surrendered and cast Chrissy a look of reproof. ‘You should have let me order her a proper meal. She’s starving!’

‘She just likes eating off other people’s plates.’ She watched him sipping his coffee, the cup cradled elegantly in one lean hand.

If this job panned out, she would probably see him again. Torbald Manor, his late grandfather’s home, would only be about ten miles away. Did he still live there? Her brow furrowed. She wasn’t very well up on the rules of aristocratic inheritance. The title, she was aware, had gone to his uncle, and even if Blaze had been next in line, it couldn’t have gone to him. His mother had never married his father.

‘He’s illegitimate!’ Elaine had gasped when she found out. ‘Would you believe it...? I mean, in a family like that!’

‘Are you finished?’ Blaze regarded her expectantly.

‘Yes.’ She pushed away her cup as though she had finished. She could feel his impatience.

‘I have to be in Brighton by noon.’

In the cab, he got a call on his mobile phone. Something about a horse-box and an accident. His language was choice. Chrissy wanted to cover Rosie’s ears. She sent him a dirty look but he was too intent on the call to notice. The cab dropped them off seconds before he completed the call.

Sending a fleeting glance at his watch, he breathed, ‘Transport...that’s a bit of a problem...’

‘Transport?’ she repeated uncertainly.

‘Can you catch the train to Reading?’

She nodded.

‘Right, make it tomorrow afternoon, OK?’ He unlocked his car, reached in for a notepad and scribbled something down on it. ‘Call that number when you arrive and someone will come and pick you up. Ask for the head lad—’

‘The head what?’

‘Ask for Hamish,’ he rephrased tersely. ‘He’ll ferry you back to the Hall.’

Ten seconds later he was in the driver’s seat. Ten after that, he was gone. Rosie’s bottom lip wobbled alarmingly. They had been dumped without ceremony.

Mrs Davis was hovering in the hallway, quite an achievement in so cramped a space. ‘You seem to have solved your problems,’ she said archly.

‘Sorry, I—’

‘Don’t think I don’t know who he is. Well...well...well, I thought to myself last night,’ she confided. ‘Fancy it being him,’ I said to my Stan. He’s decided to meet his obligations, has he? Not before time—’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Chrissy was trying to edge past the older woman.

Mrs Davis pursed her lips, her sudden congeniality waning at the lack of feedback. ‘He doesn’t want anyone to know, does he? But anyone with eyes in their head could tell she was his kid. Same hair, same eyes. You should have sold your story to a newspaper. They pay a lot for that sort of stuff...’

As the penny dropped, Chrissy’s jaw dropped with it. She was implying that Rosie was Blaze’s child. ‘Of course she’s n-not his,’ she stammered in horror. ‘She’s got absolutely n-nothing to do with him!’

Mrs Davis stepped back but she had the last word. ‘But he pays your rent when he has to,’ she said with a smirk.

Just because Rosie had black hair and blue eyes! On such slender possibilities to assume... The cheek of the woman! Clearly she spent too much time reading the murkier tabloids. However, Mrs Davis didn’t have the power to hold Chrissy’s thoughts for very long.

She swept Rosie up into an exuberant hug. ‘We’ve got a job, Rosie! Use of a car, did you hear that bit? This man is going to eat as if he’s staying at the Ritz,’ she swore feelingly. ‘Whatever it takes, we’ll stick it out.’

‘This man’, she repeated to herself. For goodness’ sake, Blaze hadn’t even given her his name! ‘The Hall’, he had said. Her brow furrowed. It didn’t ring any bells of recognition, yet she would have believed that she knew every sizeable house within a ten-mile radius of her former home.

‘I’m sorry that we were so late,’ Chrissy said again, hoping to lighten the atmosphere.

‘Aye,’ Hamish responded dourly and that appeared to be the height of his conversational ability since she had got little else from him since he’d picked them up in a Land Rover at the station. A bomb scare had thrown the trains into chaos. They had been lucky to get on a train at all. But the explanation hadn’t cut much ice with Hamish.

He was a wiry little Scotsman with the build of an ex-jockey. He had taken one look at her and Rosie and his astonishment had been palpable. Evidently they weren’t what he had expected. She had seen him squinting at her naked wedding-ring finger, watched his weather-beaten face go tight with disapproval. The chill in the air was not her imagination.

Chrissy’s nerves were starting to respond to that chill. What if Blaze had taken too much upon himself in hiring her? What if Hamish’s boss was as taken aback by the sight of them as Hamish had been? Rosie was asleep under her arm, a dead weight of toddler exhaustion. Chrissy didn’t feel much livelier. All she wanted was a bed for the night. Tomorrow she would worry herself to death about the future, not tonight.

The headlights illuminated trees and hedgerows and little else, but she knew exactly where they were even if she didn’t know where they were going to end up. Then Hamish turned off the road into the village and up a long, steep lane. In her time, it had been overgrown and pot-holed. Now it was trimmed and surfaced.

‘Mrs Easton’s house!’ she exclaimed involuntarily.

‘Westleigh Hall,’ Hamish corrected.

‘But I thought it was derelict.’ Chrissy had never seen the house because it was so far from the road, but she did recall the old lady in the funny hats in church. She had died and the house had lain empty ever since.

‘Practically. The guv’nor’s got vision.’ Hamish looked as if he might actually have said more, and then he glanced at her and compressed his lips.

They drove past a brightly lit lodge. The Hall was a grey stone edifice, built on irregular lines. That was all she saw in the flare of the headlights because it was in complete darkness.

Hamish took her cases and Chrissy struggled out with Rosie, trying not to wake her. The front door wasn’t locked. He reached for a light switch and then muttered, ‘Electric must still be off.’

‘You’re kidding me,’ Chrissy groaned.

He disappeared and she heard him banging about through cupboards. He returned with a torch and showed her into a vast, cheerless kitchen. ‘There should be some food in the fridge. I’ll be leaving you, then,’ he said.

And he did. She sank down on a chair with Rosie. She wanted to put her head down and cry. There was no heat, no light. Well, what did you expect, Chrissy? she asked herself. You’re not a guest, entitled to expect a three-star welcome. You’re the housekeeper. Rising upright, she settled Rosie into a huddle on a sagging armchair. She covered her with her coat and prayed that she would stay asleep while she searched out a bed for them both.

Climbing those stairs was the creepiest experience Chrissy had ever had. The torchlight cast weird leaping shadows and accentuated dark, forbidding doorways. She shone it into room after room and discovered three sparkling new bathrooms, but there appeared to be only one furnished bedroom.

At the end of the huge landing, a corridor ran off unexpectedly to the left and a narrow flight of stairs disappeared up into the gloom of the attics. At least, she assumed they led to the attics, for her explorations had been forced to a halt by an untidy stack of floorboards. Between her and the remainder of the upper floor stretched a ten-foot-wide chasm of bare joists.

The discovery gave Chrissy quite a start. Just suppose that she hadn’t been looking where she was going? Blaze hadn’t been joking when he’d said that the house was in a state. And presumably the one furnished bedroom was for her.

She lugged up the cases, scanned the room with a sigh and then hauled a battered chaise-longue over to the side of the king-size divan. Opening up their luggage, she made up a bed for Rosie on the chaise-longue. Rosie, who twisted and turned all night long, was murder to share a bed with.

Downstairs the fridge revealed three bottles of champagne, a wizened tomato and an abandoned lunchbox with mouldy contents. She found biscuits in a cupboard but what she really wanted was a decent cup of tea.

Unfortunately the ancient range in one corner was stone-cold. Her mouth tightening expressively, Chrissy surrendered. It was obvious that nobody gave two hoots about her comfort! Lifting Rosie, she carried her upstairs. At least if she went to bed she would be warm.

Naturally there was no hot water in the nearest bathroom. It didn’t surprise her. Shivering with cold, she checked on her sister, cosily snuggled up beneath her blankets, and then she doused the torch and dived into the chilly embrace of the bed. She slept instantly, felled at last by the traumas of the past week.

But once she started having the dream—that dream unlike any other in her experience—it seemed so real that she briefly thought she was awake. Where once she had been cold, she was hot in the grip of an amazingly erotic fantasy where she lay in a shameless tangle of limbs.

It wasn’t she lying there while male hands roamed slowly, expertly over every quivering inch of flesh tantalisingly shielded by a thin layer of cotton. It wasn’t she who arched and moaned when knowing fingers skimmed over the straining mounds of her breasts, her nipples tightening instantly into an almost painful sensitivity. And most certainly it wasn’t she who dragged him hungrily down to her in the darkness and virtually crashed into combustible collision with the hot, hard urgency of his devouring mouth.

The surge of excitement that engulfed her was reassuringly unreal. She was a burning current, a blazing fuse wire hurtling at a breakneck pace towards dynamite, nothing on her mind but the terrible need for that imminent explosion. And then somewhere in the darkness there came a tiny recognisable sound, a faint gurgle as Rosie mumbled in her sleep, a sound so inherently familiar that Chrissy’s eyes shot wide open and then she knew she was awake. Oh, lord, did she know, still trapped beneath the demanding weight of an all-male body.

Tearing her swollen mouth free, she jerked her head away with a rising moan of horror. ‘Get off me!’ she gasped, stricken.

Two things happened almost simultaneously. Suddenly she was free. Suddenly the air was blue with male outrage. No awakening could have been more violent or terrifying. Sixth sense told her who had been taking advantage of her virtually inanimate body while she had believed she was dreaming. But sixth sense was choosing an identity almost more threatening than that of a total stranger, so she refused to listen to it.

A lamp went on, illuminating the scene. Sitting bolt upright, clutching the duvet to her like a protective cocoon, Chrissy was shattered into complete silence by the sight that met her frightened gaze.

‘What the hell are you doing in my bed?’ Blaze raked at her from between gritted teeth.