Читать книгу Rival Attractions - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 5

AS CHARLOTTE turned the corner and swung her ancient Volvo estate car into the square which, when not in use as a market, served the town as its most central parking area, she cursed under her breath.

The car park was full; of course, it would have to be when she was running late like this. Not that Paul would mind. But she did. She hated it when she found herself running behind schedule.

Today had been an exceptionally busy day—one of her busiest perhaps since she had taken over the running of the estate-agency business her father had established here in this small Lincolnshire country town, almost six years ago now.

Initially, when her father had first become ill, she had just stepped in on a temporary basis, but as the months had passed and it had become clear that her father was never going to be well enough to return to work, she had unwillingly given in to the emotional pressure he had put on her to give up her plans for living and working in London, independent of his rather dominating personality and the confines of a small country town where everyone knew everyone else’s business.

Her father hadn’t been an easy person to live with, and he had certainly not been easy to work for. Although nominally Charlotte was in charge of the business, her father had demanded a full nightly report on everything that was happening, often criticising her to the point where she had had to fight to hold on to her temper, and to remind herself that he was a very sick man, who had to be humoured and cosseted. Now her father was dead, and there was really no reason why she shouldn’t sell up and leave. That was the trouble with growing older, she reflected, as she searched the square for a parking place. You became reluctant to make changes. The impetus which would once have taken her back to London was gone; she had become too used to small-town life and the last six years had developed in her a reluctant loyalty to the business which her father had founded. She liked dealing with people. She enjoyed the independence of being her own boss, of being able to make her own innovations and alterations. In the last few months of his life, her father had been unable to take any interest in the business whatsoever, and since his death she had experienced an odd disorientating sense of inertia, which made her reluctant to make any radical changes in her life.

Let’s face it, she told herself, you’ve become a small-town person…set in your ways…used to a certain routine.

She was almost twenty-eight years old, mature enough to appreciate what she could and could not have from life.

Ahead of her she saw brake lights illuminate one of the parked cars. Someone was leaving the car park. And then, as the driver started to reverse, she saw the car on the other side of the car park, patiently waiting to reverse into the soon-to-be-empty spot. Only, oblivious to the waiting car, the one pulling out was reversing in its direction—leaving the emptying space unprotected. If she was quick, she could drive straight into it. She gnawed on her bottom lip, knowing that the other driver would have every right to be furious, but telling herself virtuously that on this one occasion her need was very much the greater.

She had to see Paul to settle the last of her father’s financial affairs. The rest of her week was fully booked up. Their hitherto very quiet part of the country was suddenly being invaded by city dwellers in search of rural escapism. Over the last month she had been besieged with enquiries from Londoners wanting to explore the possibility of moving out to the country. While this was good for business, it had its negative side. The town was only small; house prices were shooting up, which meant that local young people, first-time home buyers, and those elderly couples who had lived in tied properties throughout their working lives, were now being priced out of the property market.

Charlotte was still frowning over this as she quickly nipped into the now-vacant parking space.

If she was quick, she would be out of her car and on her way to Paul’s office on the other side of the square before the affronted driver could object to her stealing of his or her spot.

Slightly shamefacedly, she opened her car door and got out.

She was wearing her normal working uniform of a long-line box-pleated skirt, a shirt, and a thick woollen jumper over the top of it. In the back of the Volvo were her wellies and Barbour—essential items for life in the country, especially when her job took her to outlying properties to do valuations. Spring had been slow in coming this year, and Charlotte had long ago discovered that short skirts and high heels, elegant though they might look, were not very practical garb when it came to crawling around measuring floors and walls.

Had anyone asked her to describe her own looks, she would have said offhandedly that she was a little over average height, probably slightly too thin; that her face, with its high cheekbones and thick, straight eyebrows, was not softly feminine in the way that men liked; that her shining waterfall of glossy dark hair lacked sensual allure; and that her eyes, grey rather than blue, saw things a little too clearly to appeal to the majority of the male sex.

Her mother had died when she was five years old; her father had not remarried, and he had brought Charlotte up on his own, never really allowing her to forget that she was not the son he would have preferred, and yet somehow underlining at the same time that she was not the kind of feminine, appealing daughter he would have liked.

Because of this, she had grown up with a direct, uncompromising manner towards other people of both sexes, and a protective, almost stark belief that she was not the kind of woman who was likely to appeal to men, and so, for that reason, she might as well learn to be independent and like it.

As the years had passed and she had seen some of the marriages of her schoolfriends disintegrate under the pressures of modern life, she had watched, helped and commiserated as those friends had rebuilt their broken lives, and she had wondered if, after all, she was not better off than them. She might never have known the joys of loving and being loved, but neither had she experienced the pain of committing herself to another human being only to have that commitment rejected.

She had seen too often what it did to her sex when that rejection came—how hard it was for a woman who based her whole identity and life on the man she shared that life with to establish a separate, independent identity and life when the relationship was over.

Women were their own worst enemies, she thought. They loved too generously, made themselves too vulnerable. Men seemed to have an inbuilt ability to protect themselves from the kinds of hurts that women suffered. She had lost count of the number of times she had seen couples she had thought of as being happily married break up, the man walking away to a new life, leaving the woman brokenhearted, alone, often with enormous emotional and financial problems to cope with—not to mention the children of the marriage.

Charlotte was an intelligent woman; she knew that there were men who suffered just as much as women, but by and large the ratio of suffering seemed to her to be weighted far too heavily in her sex’s direction.

She had been engaged once, briefly, but, when her father had become ill and she had had to return home, Gordon had become petulant and irritable, resentful of her decision to put her father’s health first. When he had given her an ultimatum—her father or him—she had seen quite clearly how their lives together would be, how she would eventually become the victim of his desire to dominate their relationship emotionally.

There had been no passion in their relationship, and their decision to end their engagement had been mutual. It had been something they had drifted into as colleagues at the large estate agency where they both trained. If secretly she had hoped that he would soften towards her, and accept her need to help her father even though she would rather have been with him, she hardened her thought against that vulnerability when their engagement ended.

Since then there had been no man in her life. If challenged she would have said that men found her intimidating rather than alluring, and that she preferred it that way. Living in a small town as she did, with a position to maintain in the community, brief affairs, sexual flings, even the odd innocent moment of dalliance were not things that could be kept secret, and since she had no desire to find herself the object of local speculation, knowing how difficult it had originally been to get people to take her seriously in her business role, she had abandoned without too much reluctance the idea of having any kind of relationship with the opposite sex.

Her life was busy and fulfilled. She had good friends, an interesting career, her independence, both financial and emotional, and if ever there were times when, while cuddling a friend’s child, the soft, warm body weakeningly close to her own, she ached for a child of her own, she only had to remind herself of the traumas she had seen her friends go through at the hands of those same men, who had given them their children, to make herself realise that the price she was paying for her independence, while high, was perhaps worthwhile.

She would have liked children. She enjoyed their company, their conversation, their innocence and naturalness, but Little Marsham was not the kind of place where one could fearlessly and modernistically announce that one was going to become a single mother. No, for Charlotte, her present way of life was the best way: single and celibate.

She pulled a face to herself, and then realised that her shortest route to Paul’s office was straight across the car park in front of the driver whose parking spot she had appropriated.

It was a large dark blue Jaguar saloon car, driven by an equally impressive male, of the type most likely to cause susceptible female hearts to beat faster.

One quick guarded look told her that he was tall, dark-haired and with the kind of raw maleness that his expensive suit and white shirt did little to conceal, and that his eyes were almost the same colour as his car!

Reminding herself that she was the kind of woman who was not affected by such physical manifestations of male sensuality, Charlotte hastily averted her eyes from the car and its driver. The faint heat she could feel burning up under her skin was due to the guilt she felt at pinching his parking spot, she told herself.

She had only glanced briefly at him, but in that short space of time she had registered the fact that he was regarding her with a certain wry irony that told her he knew quite well that she was the one who had deprived him of his parking place.

She told herself that if she hadn’t done so she would probably still have been driving around, making herself later than ever for her appointment. She was going to a dinner party tonight; she still had to do her monthly supermarket shopping; she had some reports to dictate on the properties she had seen today.

The influx of new, wealthy London-based buyers had seen an increase of property on to the market, especially those situated outside the town—often large and rather dilapidated houses with owners on the verge of retiring, who were looking for something smaller and more economical to run. Rather as she ought to be doing, she reminded herself. The house her father had bought when he first moved to the area over thirty years ago had originally been a vicarage. Several miles outside the town, on the edge of a small village, it was a rambling, draughty place with an enormous garden, and far too many rooms for one person.

She ought to sell it now, while the market was buoyant, buy herself something smaller and invest what was left. She had not had a particularly happy childhood; there was no reason why she should feel that she ought to keep the house. It should be filled with a family, with children, dogs, and perhaps a pony in the paddock. She could sell it tomorrow and virtually ask her own price, despite the fact that the central heating was fired by an ancient and temperamental boiler, the rooms all needed redecorating, and the garden was like a wilderness.

So why hadn’t she done so? Shaking her head at her own impracticality, she crossed the road and hurried into the building which housed her solicitor’s office.

Like her, Paul was the second generation of the family business. He was three years her senior, and they had known one another virtually all their lives. At one time Paul had tried to date her, but it had been just after she had come home, still sore from her broken engagement, too drained by the hard work of adjusting herself to living at home with her father. They had remained friends, though, and she liked Paul’s wife Helen very much indeed.

Paul greeted her affectionately when his secretary showed her into his office, telling her it didn’t matter when she apologised for being late.

‘Business good?’ he asked her when she was sitting down.

‘Pretty hectic.’

‘Mm…Recently there seems to be a lot of outside interest. That should be good for you.’

Charlotte pulled a face.

‘Yes, financially, but there are broader implications. I had John Garner and Lucy Matthews in the other week. He and Lucy are getting married this summer. They’ve been looking for a suitable house locally for months. John will take over his father’s farm eventually, but there isn’t room there for them to move in. John’s the eldest; there are four other children still at home. Naturally he and Lucy want a place of their own, but we just haven’t had anything they can afford. His wages are low, and Lucy doesn’t earn much either.’

‘Can’t one of the farm buildings be converted into something for them?’

‘Not without planning permission, and you know how keen the local council is on keeping new building to a minimum. In theory that’s something I approve of, especially when it comes to new estates, but…’

She gave a small shrug and, watching her, Paul said gently, ‘The trouble with you, Charlie, is that you take things too much to heart.’

She flushed a little. Everyone who knew her well called her by the diminutive name she had been given while still at school—another sign that she was lacking in femininity, she reflected wryly.

Treacherously her thoughts slid to the driver of the blue Jaguar car; she’d bet that the women in his life weren’t given boyish nicknames.

Instantly she was furious with herself. What on earth had made her think that? Was she so very predictable after all? she asked herself scornfully. A brief glimpse of a handsome face, an awareness of the scrutiny with which a pair of dark blue eyes were studying her face, and suddenly she was seeing herself through those blue eyes and finding herself lacking.

She tried to concentrate on what Paul was saying.

‘It will mean extra business for me, but, of course, it’s bound to affect you.’

She tensed, suddenly realising what he was talking about.

It had been just after her father’s death that she had first heard the rumours that a new estate agent was contemplating opening up in the area. The influx of newcomers into the area had obviously attracted the attention of people looking for new business activities. Over recent months a rash of expensive small shops supplying luxury goods had opened up in the town; the owner of the local garage had been bought out, and the newcomers had knocked down the old building and rebuilt a large custom-designed showroom, which was now filled with shiny expensive cars, and small, prettily covered four-wheel-drive dinky toys with exotic and unpronounceable names.

It was a long way from the old days when Fred Jarvis supplied petrol, did repairs and maintenance, and could when pressed find you an ancient but roadworthy Land Rover.

Perhaps she ought to have been more prepared for competition in her own field, but she had been so exhausted by the effort of nursing her father through the final weeks of his illness that, when she had heard the gossip about the new estate agency opening up in the town, she had merely absorbed it without thinking about its impact on her own life.

Now she said evenly, ‘Well, there’s enough business for both of us.’

She didn’t add that she suspected the newcomer would be after a quick killing, that he would take advantage of the surge of buying and selling, no doubt taking the cream off the top of her business with the larger, more expensive properties.

Paul was looking dubious, and Charlotte could guess what he was thinking. The townspeople were set in their ways, traditionalists in the main like her father; they had dealt with her when they had had no choice, but now, with a new agency opening up, no doubt run by a man, would they still give her, a woman, their business?

‘At the moment, yes, but when this boom is over…’

‘When it’s over he’ll probably close up his office and move away again,’ Charlotte told him shortly. ‘After all, from what I’ve heard this office is only going to be one of several.’

‘I believe so, yes,’ Paul agreed.

Charlotte sighed, knowing all that he didn’t want to say. She knew quite well how these modern agencies worked: brash, pushy, promising the earth, persuading people into taking on much larger mortgages than they could afford, and taking a commission on selling the finance to them. That was not the way she did business.

Paul was speaking again.

‘I’m surprised they didn’t approach you with an offer to buy you out.’

‘It’s just as well they didn’t. I wouldn’t have sold. Have I signed everything now?’ she asked him, changing the subject. She hated being the object of the concern and almost pity of her friends, who all seemed to assume that she was bound to lose out to the newcomer. She was proud of the way she ran her business—her values might be old-fashioned, but she intended to hold on to them. If the arrival of the newcomer meant that she had to scrap the plans she had been making for expanding, then at least no one but herself knew of those plans.

‘I suppose you’re going to the Jameses’ tonight?’ Paul asked when he had checked that she had signed everything.

Charlotte nodded and grimaced. ‘Yes, but I’m not looking forward to it. I like Adam, but Vanessa isn’t really my type.’

‘Nor mine,’ Paul agreed. ‘She’s a bit of a man-eater.’

Adam and Vanessa James were the local high-fliers. Adam was a quiet, studious man in his late thirties whose innovative skill in the world of computers had led to his establishing a very successful business. They had moved into the area five years ago, buying a large Victorian house on the outskirts of the same village as Charlotte’s father’s house.

Charlotte had always felt that in some way Vanessa resented her, although she could not see why. By her own lights Vanessa had everything she wanted from life: a wealthy, generous husband, who turned a blind eye to her determined flirtations with other men; a superb home, on which no expense had been spared; two quiet, dull children, who spent most of their time away at boarding school. Add to that the frequent shopping trips to London, their attendance at all the major events of the social calendar, holidays in the Caribbean in winter, and other far-flung exotic and fashionable spots in summer, and it was difficult to understand the resentment that Charlotte always felt emanating from Vanessa. What had she got that Vanessa could possibly envy?

Vanessa was a small, delicate blonde with a façade of pretty-prettiness that set Charlotte’s own teeth on edge; they were poles apart in every way there was.

In Vanessa’s shoes, Charlotte doubted that she would have asked her to her dinner party, but Vanessa always made a point of including her in her invitations, and then always put her back up by making derogatory comments either about her single status or what Vanessa liked to call her ‘feminism’.

Given free choice, Charlotte would not be attending tonight’s dinner party, but she liked Adam and felt sorry for him, and it was the kind of affair that would be bristling with important business contacts. She was attending in her role as local estate agent, that was all, and she would much rather have spent the evening getting some of her paperwork out of the way.

The car park was almost empty when she returned to her car. She noticed guiltily that the dark blue Jaguar was parked a few spaces away, mercifully without its driver.

As she drove homewards, perhaps because of Paul’s comments, her mind was on the new estate agency opening up in competition to her. She had told Paul that there was enough business for both of them while the boom lasted, and that she suspected that once it was over the newcomer would close his office and go elsewhere. These new high-powered agencies weren’t interested in local communities and small business, they wanted quick high profits, so in the long term, if she could just survive, she felt she had nothing to fear.

None the less she did feel slightly uneasy as she drove back to the village. From being bright and unclouded, the future had suddenly become threateningly overcast. As she turned into the long gravel drive to the house, the knowledge that there was no one inside waiting for her, no one with whom she could share the burden of her doubts and fears, depressed her.

She and her father had not been close, but she did miss him. They had not always agreed, but before his illness had become too much for him, they had been able to discuss the business. She had friends, of course, good ones, but her father’s teaching and her own natural caution inclined her away from discussing her problems with them. She was more used to the role of confidante, that of receiving confidences rather than giving them.

Her telephone was ringing as she walked into the kitchen. She picked up the receiver, and frowned a little as she recognised the still girlish voice of Sophy Williams.

Sophy had been widowed tragically six months previously. Her husband had been killed in a road accident. At only twenty-three he had not thought to carry adequate insurance on his own life, and, although their small house was now Sophy’s outright, with two small children to support and no proper income she had no idea how she was going to find the money to run the house and feed and clothe the children and herself. Although she didn’t want to do so, she was beginning to feel she would have to sell her home and move in with her parents.

Promising to visit her the following day, Charlotte was still frowning as she replaced the receiver.

Although luckily she had not as yet said anything to Sophy, Charlotte had been considering offering her a part-time job. She could do with an assistant to help her. Sophy’s twins were only three years old, but Sophy’s next-door neighbour in the small row of terraced houses where they lived was a retired schoolteacher, who Charlotte suspected would be only too happy to look after the children for her for a small part of each day. It had been her intention to propose to Sophy that she made what outside visits to potential clients were necessary during the hours that Mrs Meachim looked after the twins, and that all her paperwork could then be done from home, so that she was there with the twins for the rest of the day.

At this stage she could not afford to pay Sophy a great deal, but she would train her properly and, once the twins were at school, she envisaged taking Sophy on on a more full-time basis.

Sophy was a touchy, proud girl, all too well aware that her parents had not approved of her marrying so young. As she had confided miserably to Charlotte, the only option she seemed to have was to sink her pride, sell the house and move back in with her parents who had grudgingly offered her and the twins a home. Charlotte knew quite well that if Sophy thought for one moment that she was offering her a job out of pity she wouldn’t take it. She had hoped to convince the younger girl that, with the sudden property boom, she desperately needed more help than that provided by Sheila Walsh, who ran the office for her, but now that she was facing competition from another agency Charlotte was not sure that Sophy would be so easy to deceive. She was an intelligent girl.

Tomorrow Charlotte hoped to dissuade her from putting her house on the market. She knew how much Sophy prized her independence. Her parents’ home was immaculate, and Mrs Sellars was particularly fussy about both the house and the garden. She would not enjoy having a pair of mischievous three-year-olds permanently about the place.

Sophy had said as much herself, and then added that, despite her own reluctance to accept her parents’ offer, she didn’t see that she had much alternative. She had no mortgage to pay, but no money coming in either. With what she would make on the sale of the house, she would be able to invest money for the twins’ future, and living with her parents she would have very little outgoings.

Tomorrow, hopefully, Charlotte would be able to persuade her to reconsider, knowing as she did all the doubts Sophy had about moving back with her parents.

A glance at the kitchen clock warned Charlotte that it was time for her to go upstairs and get changed.

The kitchen had changed very little over the years since her mother’s death. In fact, nothing in the house had changed. There had been times when she had tried to persuade her father to redecorate and refurnish, but he had obstinately refused to do so.

Now the house was hers, she recognised, and, looking around the bleak, dull kitchen, she acknowledged that it was no wonder she found it unappealing to come back to.

If she were selling it for someone else, she would be forced to tell the owners it had very little buyer appeal, that it might be structurally sound, waterproof and weatherproof, but that it lacked warmth, and the kind of ambience that drew prospective purchasers.

Her father hadn’t been a wealthy man, but he hadn’t been poor either. Charlotte had been a little surprised to discover how much money she had inherited, quite apart from the business. By rights she ought to sell this house and buy something much smaller, more easily run—something more suitable for a career woman who had very little time to spend on caring for her home.

She couldn’t sell it in its present unappealing state, she decided grimly, mentally comparing it to the homes of her friends. She had several friends who had performed wonders with houses initially far more unprepossessing than hers. She would have to ask their advice. She certainly didn’t have the time herself to search for fabrics and wall coverings, to engage workmen and choose fitments…

But she might have, if the new agency took too much of her business. A cold finger of apprehension seemed to touch her spine, a tiny icicle of fear. There was enough business for both of them, surely? She couldn’t let her father down by losing everything he had worked so hard for. Shrugging her disquiet aside, she headed for the stairs, making a mental decision to lose no time in seeking the help of her friends in revamping the house.

It was almost as though in making that decision she was forcing herself to believe that, despite this newcomer, her own agency would survive. She had to have that belief in herself, she acknowledged wryly as she opened her bedroom door, because there was certainly no one in her life to have that faith in her.

Disliking her mood of self-pity, she grimaced mockingly at her reflection in the mirror. What was the matter with her? She had looked into a pair of navy-blue eyes and suddenly become aware of the fact that she was a woman and very much alone. Was she going through some sort of emotional crisis? Some sort of watershed? She was perfectly happy with her life the way it was, for goodness’ sake. The owner of the blue eyes was not even the kind of man who appealed to her. He had been too good-looking, for one thing…too assured…too male.

A tiny shiver touched her, exposing a hidden raw spot of unhealed pain. She was well aware that such a sensual man would never be attracted to a woman like her, that he would not find her feminine and soft enough, that he would be antipathetic to her independence, her staunch determination to be seen as a human being and not a woman.

No, he was the kind of man who gravitated more naturally to the Vanessas of this world, to the sugar and spice of the softness that in reality cloaked a sharp hardness that was far more dangerous than her own gritty independence. At least she was honest, and made no attempts to conceal what she was.

The Vanessas of this world pretended to a vulnerability they did not actually possess, using it to pander to the male ego. By rights she ought to despise both them and the men who were stupid enough to fall for their deceit. Angry with herself, she turned away from the mirror and hurried into her bathroom.

If she was not going to be late, she’d better shower and wash her hair.