Table of Contents
Books by Rebecca Fairfax
Title Page
Legal Page
Book Description
Dedication
Trademark Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Read more like this
More exciting books!
About the Author
Totally Bound Publishing books by Rebecca Fairfax
Rent-a-Perfect-Gentleman
For the Fireworks
Rent-a-Perfect-Gentleman
WINTER SPARKS
REBECCA FAIRFAX
Winter Sparks
ISBN # 978-1-83943-364-1
©Copyright Rebecca Fairfax 2020
Cover Art by Erin Dameron-Hill ©Copyright February 2020
Interior text design by Claire Siemaszkiewicz
Totally Bound Publishing
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Totally Bound Publishing.
Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Totally Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2020 by Totally Bound Publishing, United Kingdom.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorised copies.
Totally Bound Publishing is an imprint of Totally Entwined Group Limited.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book”.
Book two in the
Rent-a-Perfect-Gentleman series
Winter—spring? No—winter sparks!
Meet Hugo Winter, gorgeous fifty-something all-round perfect gentleman, and Alessa Marks, sexy late-twenties local journalist—and not really an elegant lady. While entrepreneur Hugo is at meetings with city luminaries and pitching venture capital ideas to fellow businessmen, Alessa’s probably chasing a reclusive rock star for an interview or sticking her nose into a local scandal for her column, Sparks, in the Montford Herald.
When an unexpected meeting just before Christmas brings never-the-twain Hugo and Alessa together, sparks combust. But can a winter–spring relationship, particularly one that starts out with passion hot enough to melt snow, really work out? Especially when Hugo’s reluctant to speak about his past, making Alessa determined to ferret out his secrets? Will their love wither in the frost or bloom with the spring?
Dedication
To local journalists everywhere.
Trademark Acknowledgements
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Armani Privé: Giorgio Armani S.p.A.
Find My Friends: Apple Inc.
Google: Google, Inc
Guinness: Diageo plc
Hardy Boys: Franklin W. Dixon
James Bond: Ian Fleming
Mercedes: Daimler AG
Mini: The Rover Group Limited
Nancy Drew: Carolyn Keene
The Times: News Corp UK & Ireland Limited
Velcro: Velcro BVBA
Wikipedia: Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger
Chapter One
Friday morning found Alessandra Marks, Sparks to most people, in a pub, wondering why the stale Guinness smell that impregnated every pub carpet should be so prevalent in a hostelry with bare floorboards. Ten o’clock. Too early for a drink, even by the traditionally louche standards of a journalist, but she wasn’t there for the cask ale or the botanicals-enhanced ‘vodka for grown-ups’ gin bar. No, the first appointment in her diary for that day was for the pub’s annual exorcism.
“Are these licensed premises actually haunted?” she asked the Bishop of Montford, there to officiate and resplendent in his long white vestment and ceremonial mitre headdress.
“Shouldn’t be, or His Excellency here is slipping in his yearly duty!” quipped the Lord Mayor, there as official witness and a sight to behold with his black tricorn hat topping his chubby-cheeked face and his ermine-trimmed robes swaddling his tubby figure.
Alessa felt underdressed—she was one of the few, male and female, not wearing a skirt of some kind and was distinctly lacking in the accessories department, compared to the Lord Mayor’s heavy gold chain and seal and the bishop’s amethyst ring and matching jewel in the top of his staff, all glinting in the pub’s weak light.
In this bit of Montford’s Old Town, she wasn’t far from the Players Theatre and its costume hire service. Should she pop along and get something more splendid than her ‘uniform’ of straight-leg jeans, striped shirt worn with sweater and heavy-soled ankle boots? Nah. No time, even if she could be bothered.
She held out her digital voice recorder to capture the bishop’s practised tones, which swooped up to the timber-beamed roof and back down again to the wooden floor as he recounted the history of the alms paid to the nearby cathedral in perpetuity by every innkeeper of the Rose and Crown since the inn had been built in the sixteenth century, only to be interrupted by the Lord Mayor calling out that he betted the diocese wished the payment was index-linked to inflation, eh, eh?
Don Jackman, the current publican, probably glad the payment was still only four old pennies a year, grinned, showing off a gold tooth. Really, everyone has more bling than I do, Alessa thought. She inched back a little from the semicircle of dignitaries and worthies to join Don and his staff lined up in front of the crackling log fire. She didn’t need to hear that, in return for the alms, the diocese was charged with casting out unclean spirits from the hostelry, or the Lord Mayor’s quip that it didn’t just mean the sticky bottles from behind the bar, eh, now? Alessa preferred to cast out the December chill with the heat from the fireplace’s apple-scented flames, and hear what the publican and his staff were muttering about.
“Another square to me,” Don crowed, tapping the sheet of paper he held out for his bar staff. Alison Harper, bar manager, groaned as Don crossed off the square he’d indicated. He gave a nod to Alessa, a regular. “Hey, Sparks.”
“Damn! I had one about ‘spirits’ but not that exact ‘unclean spirits’ joke!” Alison slumped down into the cushioned recess at the side of the fireplace.
“Come on!” Kelvin, student and bartender, rallied Alison. “He’s bound to do the ‘watch out, mate, your handbag’s on fire!’ joke when the bishop starts up the incense in the censer. Then you’ll get a square!”
Oh. They were playing a Lord Mayor version of lingo bingo, were they? God knew she and her co-workers played a similar office-based version of it in management meetings at the Montford Herald, their slips on their knees under the table, crossing
off clichés such as generate content, clickbait and downward impact.
“Did he make the same jokes last year?” Alessa asked Don, indicating the Lord Mayor. Ever since he’d became a town councillor, he’d treated every meeting like a club stage. Alessa should know—she sat through enough Town Hall meetings. The word was they’d made the man Lord Mayor to kick him into a more ceremonial role, away from their day-to-day work.
“And the year before.” Don nodded, a little weary-looking. Alessa understood that feeling of routine.
“Didn’t see you last night?” Don remarked, and Alessa shook her head, something she was able to do easily, being free of the usual Friday-morning hangover, the painfully dehydrated brain and thickly dry mouth that came courtesy of the Thursday Ladies’ Night cheap drinks.
“Keren came as usual. I got caught up in something.” She stopped. Last night hadn’t been the first occasion she’d cried off recently, and not because her private research was so very engrossing. Well, truth be told, she was looking deeper into writing about the county’s unexplored historical figures, whether as long reads for the Herald, or even articles to be pitched to other papers, or history or heritage magazines, or even publishers.
Her current fascination was Lady Elizabeth Latimer, of Sedley Castle out in Montfordshire county, whom some locals swore to be—and Alessa was slowly joining their ranks—the illegitimate daughter of Henry VIII’s last queen, Catherine Parr, and Thomas Seymour, conceived when Catherine was still married to Henry and born before she took Thomas as her fourth husband.
Alessa frowned, stopping and smoothing out her face when she realised what she was doing. At twenty-seven, she’d started to be cautious about wrinkles. She’d used to look forward to Thursday nights, the-weekend-starts-here night of the week, but lately—
“Sparks!”
“About time!” Alessa called down to Miguel Almeida, the Herald’s photographer assigned to this story, who was bounding in with his usual double-speed, long-legged stride. She couldn’t be annoyed with him—he’d probably covered at least two events before zooming here to photograph this one. Luckily, he had the energy and stamina of an overgrown Portuguese mountain dog puppy in these times when staff cutbacks had added to everyone’s workload.
“His Excellency’s lighting the censer!” hissed Kelvin, making the staff and Alessa rush away from the fire’s warmth and down the two steps into the bar proper where the ceremony, the exorcism, was about to start.
Miguel blotted sweat from his forehead with a tissue and took up position with his camera. Alessa threw back her thick blonde mane that no amount of layering seemed to thin out, only making it bounce around her face, and held out her recorder again.
“At least this job keeps you fit, gives you some ‘exorcise’!” called the Lord Mayor, who then looked hurt at the groans.
“Didn’t a publican die in here on the job, back in the nineteenth century?” Miguel asked, clicking away. “Just keeled over, working the beer pump? I read it in a book on Old Montford.” An incomer, he was interested in the town. He indicated the robed churchman asking for the intervention of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then, with a nod to Catholicism, Archangel Michael, to cast out demons. “So, this could be just as well!”
The bishop swung the censer on its chain, and the massive waft of cedar and musk, woody and peppery, took Alessa back to Mitch and the Armani Privé cologne he used to douse himself in. Wow. That had been a long time ago, and while things had run their course and she didn’t miss him—or his industrial-strength quantities of cologne—she sort of missed…someone. Missed intimacy, she supposed. Oh, and sex. She coughed and dabbed at her eyes.
“The frankincense is strong.” Miguel turned his head away from the smoking metal orb reeking of fumes and pine needles.
“It’s not myrrh?” joked Alessa.
“That tends to be more lemony.” Miguel grinned, showing even, white teeth. “Years of Catholic Mass. You can’t mistake the scents.”
The Lord Mayor chose that moment to yell, “I say, Bishop, your handbag’s on fire!”
Alessa groaned and the bishop began a prayer of deliverance. Timely.
“Staying for a drink and a bite to eat?” Don asked her and Miguel after, as the audience started to file out.
Alessa, conducting hurried interviews with members of the public who’d attended, shook her head. “But I’d love a coffee and a cheese toastie to go!” She made puppy-dog eyes at him as he waddled behind the bar.
“I caught that!” Miguel beckoned her over to show her the shot of her he’d just snapped on his digital. “Might be one for the board in the newsroom?” He rubbed his arm where she thumped it, pretending it hurt. “It’s nice!” he protested.
It was a funny pic, she supposed, showing her in her usual ‘done but undone vibe’, as Keren, her flatmate, called it, messy honey-blonde hair usually escaping from a clip or elastic and her eyes here looking pleading, rather than assessing or narrowed in thought, framed by beige-blonde lashes and capped by brown-blonde brows. Her sister had always said Alessa would look exactly like a Golden Retriever if she had brown eyes instead of sapphire blue. Bitch.
“Oh, tack it up, by all means,” she told Miguel. “It’ll give Jim a target to aim at! Oh, excuse me, sir!” She leapt to catch a man just entering, who looked startled at her pounce, as well he might. “Did you know this pub has just undergone its yearly exorcism? And do you believe in ghosts?”
She managed three more mini interviews, to give texture to her piece, in the next ten minutes, the final one with a passerby in the cobbled street, some poor soul late for something, by the look of him, whom she charmed into being even later. It took balls of brass to be a newsman, it was said. What was the female equivalent? Ovaries of brass to be a newswoman? That was fine by her. She didn’t see herself as the maternal type, not really.
“Thanks, Don! Or rather, thanks, Kelvin, for making it!” Alessa added, taking the toasted sandwich in its paper bag. She realised as soon as she was in the street that taking lunch to go had been a silly idea. The pub’s warmth and glow had lured her into thinking the day was warmer than it was. But what could she expect in December? Huddled in her winter parka, she stood irresolute in the trickle of people. She should go back to the Herald, that unlovely brick and glass building at the top of the town. She had more than this item to write up. Still dithering, and chewing as she walked, Alessa decided to check in at Harley’s, Montford’s oldest family-owned independent department store.
Trying to keep up with the times, they’d turned most of the top floor into a hairdressing and beauty spa, arousing the ire of those who’d preferred the haberdashery and handicrafts departments, and transformed the ground floor’s tourist and souvenir section into a bright, breezy grab-and-go café with its own door into the street, incurring the wrath of various local coffee shop owners who felt challenged by the competition. Alessa felt the latest addition sat oddly next to the stout leather and sturdy canvas of the Luggage and Travel Accessories department, but she loved the old Edwardian building and its uniformed assistants who directed its loyal shoppers to various sections, lifts and stairways in the higgledy-piggledy store.
She knew her way, and soon slid through Gifts and Toys to stick her head around the door of Kaye’s office, where she learned Harley’s were thinking of making over the waitress service restaurant, with its vases of flowers on the linen-clothed tables, into an ultra-modern self-service one. It would be good to report that update, if she could swing it past Jim. Hopefully get readers writing in, either in favour or against, and act as a free puff for the store. Oh, she could run past Phil Soames, the paper’s Old Monty, city memorialist, the idea of doing a piece on locals’ memories of bygone stores and shops! Even if that would mean hours digging in the picture archives and—
“Yes, Jim?” Alessa said on a sigh, grabbing her ringing phone and making an apology face at Kaye, miming showing herself out. Seemed the editor possessed clairvoyant powers now and could se
e his staff slacking off. “Don’t worry. I know it’s the local Chamber of Commerce Business Awards tonight. I haven’t forgotten I’m covering it, as well as knowing I’m one of the visible faces of the Herald for the award we sponsor.”
Well, Maximum, the weekend magazine, was the sponsor, strictly speaking, but the edict of don’t embarrass the mothership was the same. And damn. She’d forgotten to ask Miguel to go as her partner, as well as the paper’s photographer.
“Not that. Well, that as well. Just got a call about activity at Mill Island.”
Alessa pulled her phone away to hide a snort, staring at the Christmas window display that took her back to childhood. Honestly, that sentence of Jim’s sounded as though it came straight from the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew. “As in mysterious lights and spooky noises? Do you want me to call the police?” she deadpanned.
“Don’t arse me around,” came the blunt reply. “Do you know anything about planning permission being granted for the land or any buildings there?”
“From council meetings? No.” And she sat through as many as she could. Always had, which was how she’d uncovered—
“Neither does anyone else here. Well, not likely to. You far away?”
“As Miguel says, nowhere is far away from anywhere here in Montford. So, no. Want me to check it out?”
“If you’d be so kind.”
She pictured him rolling his eyes, almost cracking a smile, and set off, shortcutting through the University of Art and Design campus down to the canal, stopping to buy a hot drink just to keep her hands warm. She really should invest in one of those magic gel hand warmer things.
It almost felt like her working day was done—this was the route she took home to the canal-side quay development she lived in. Now, however, she walked right, past the converted warehouse block, that swinging-singles complex, trying not to feel she was ageing out of its catchment demographic. Funny, the living arrangements route around any city. People went from university residence halls to shared student houses, followed by young, free and single apartments, then their first shared home—usually in one of the city’s more laid-back and child-friendly neighbourhoods—before buying out in the county, children in tow. Here she was three steps in, and it didn’t look as though she’d be taking a further stride any time soon.
Winter Sparks Page 1