by Unknown
Hunter Gardner was reading his Sunday Telegraph on his very clean decking now, a cafetière and a pair of binoculars on the small table in front of him as he enjoyed a little pre-church bird-watching. Ellen crouched down as she passed the gap in the laurels that masked the two gardens and headed for the carport to search for break-in equipment.
An extending ladder was suspended from hooks in the ceiling and conscientiously secured by a bicycle lock so that wannabe burglars – or locked-out daughters – couldn’t easily appropriate it to shimmy up to an open attic window. But, to Ellen’s relief, it had a combination lock. She could hear Snorkel trotting around and whining overhead as she set about trying a few codes that her parents favoured – various four-figure combinations of birthdays and the 90053 ‘goose’ code. At least it passed the time, and made her feel curiously sentimental as she tried out their anniversary and the year she had graduated.
‘Bingo!’ It was her father’s birth year – as always a jolting reminder that he had seen out four more decades than her.
She carried the ladder to the front of the house and set it up by the only open window, stepping back to assess her chances of getting in before she tried out the perilous climb. The window really was very small and would take a lot of contortion to get through. She rubbed her mouth thoughtfully and looked round at the lane, praying for an AAAAIIII van to come trundling along.
The horseshoe’s bad luck was playing on her mind now. If bad fortune ran in threes, then she was really tempting fate. First the cat had escaped, then she had got locked out and now she was planning to scale three floors and clamber through a very small window. ‘Coward,’ she told herself, reknotting her belt and tugging her dressing-gown as far down her bottom as it would go. Then, making sure that the top of the ladder was firmly braced up against the thatch, she started to climb.
It was much easier than she’d feared, the ladder well secured and the thick ivy and wisteria that climbed the house providing plenty of steadying handles in case she happened to wobble. It wasn’t until she tried to get from the ladder into the window that Ellen encountered a hitch.
The most obvious way to go in was to clutch the top of the dormer, step away from the ladder and on to the sill then post herself through feet first like a human cannonball into a barrel. But the thatched dormer was almost impossible to hold on to, with its anti-bird chicken-wire hairnet and its alopecia straw. Her weight stayed too far back to maintain a grip for more than a few seconds, which wasn’t long enough to get through the window before falling backwards off the roof. After two or three false starts, Ellen concluded that it was way too dangerous.
She tried gripping the window-frame instead, but couldn’t get the leverage to move across from the ladder, which pitched sideways dramatically.
‘Try going head first!’ a voice called from the road.
Ellen glanced over her shoulder, and saw a figure squinting up at her through the sunlight. The curly hair, broad shoulders and freckles were unmistakable. It was Spurs Belling, dressed in ancient jeans and flip-flops. At his ankles were Hell’s Bells’ two black Labradors, panting.
‘You could offer to help,’ Ellen muttered, under her breath, as she twisted round again.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing, young lady?’ bellowed a furious voice. Hunter Gardner had joined Spurs on the lane, now blazered and cravated for church, his bald patch gleaming with Brylcreem.
Ignoring them both because she needed to concentrate, Ellen saw that if she put one foot into the fairly pronounced dip in the stonework to her right, she would have enough purchase to push herself up into the window head first. Years ago, she had done a bit of barefoot rock-climbing in France, and remembered the principles enough to feel sure she’d be safe.
At that moment, Spurs and Hunter were joined by a sweating Giles on the way back from his run. ‘Bloody hell – what’s she doing up there?’
‘Stop her, somebody!’ Hunter roared. ‘Damn fool woman will kill herself.’
‘She’ll be fine,’ a voice reassured them, then shouted up at her, ‘Go for it!’
Ellen took one final glance over her shoulder: Spurs was encouraging her. He was standing to one side of the others – a cyclist and a fellow dog-walker had also stopped to watch – and he was the only one of her audience smiling, not remotely concerned for her safety. Suddenly she found herself grinning back. He understood that, however risky, this was better than hanging around for a locksmith.
‘Stop that immediately and come down!’ barked Hunter, now half-way along the drive.
If there was one thing Ellen loathed more than waiting around for hours, it was being spoken to as if she was a child. She hadn’t clambered all the way up here just to clamber down again. Her blood was up, her ladder was up and she was damn well getting up.
She swung her foot across to the hold, flexing her toes into the crevice until she was happy with the grip. Then, clasping the window-sill with one hand and pointing the other above her head to narrow her shoulders enough to get through, she sprang up into the aperture, twisting her body to get as far through as possible then hook herself in with her elbow.
It worked. She was half-way in, staring at the unmade bed she’d slept in the night before.
The only problem was that her bottom and legs remained outside. With nothing to get her foot on to to hoick herself further up, Ellen’s legs flailed hopelessly, acutely aware that any violent move might expose her naked bottom to the village.
‘Hang on, I’m coming up!’ yelled Hunter Gardner. ‘Giles, be a good chap and hold this ladder for me.’
As Hunter laboriously clambered up the ladder beneath Ellen’s waggling legs, two cars drew up outside Goose Cottage. One was a tatty white Escort van with AAAAIIII hand-painted along both sides, the other was a smart Mercedes. Both drivers gazed up in amazement at the sight that greeted them.
Unaware of her swelling audience, Ellen was stretching desperately for the corner of the bed to pull herself in.
‘Almost there,’ panted Hunter, exhausted by the climb and overexcited by the expanse of slim brown ankle now almost within his grasp.
Ellen grabbed the bed end just in time. The prospect of Hunter’s clammy paw on her leg propelled her through the tiny hole with only a momentary flash of buttock. The round of applause that came from outside made her laugh as she gave the room an excited high five, then collected her cut-offs and a fresh T-shirt from a chair.
Hunter was waiting by the front door to give Ellen a lecture. ‘Damn fool thing to set about trying to do – young slip of a gel like you – and barely dressed.’ His big bulldog jowls jiggled furiously. ‘What would your mother say?’
‘I’ve done far more risky things in my time, I can assure you.’ She grinned, as her audience dispersed behind him. Giles was jogging off, while the cyclist and the dog-walker had already moved on. Only Spurs was still standing in the lane, running a hand through his curls, the smile now dropping away as one eye closed against the sun and the other examined her thoughtfully.
‘That’s as may be,’ Hunter raged on, ‘but not in this village. We don’t entertain daredevils here.’ He glared conspicuously at Spurs. ‘The show’s over, young man!’
Still flooded with adrenaline and bare-faced cheek, Ellen beamed at Spurs – no longer caring that his horseshoe had brought her bad luck. It had ended, at least, with a fun challenge. And again the G-force jolt rocked her back on her heels, pumping her blood addictively fast.
When Hunter stalked angrily off to church, he stepped forward, but before he could cross the lane, a small man in an AAAAIIII T-shirt emerged from the far side of the hornbeam hedge carrying a tool-bag. Staring bashfully at the gravel, he scuffed up to Ellen. ‘Don’t suppose you need me now?’
Immensely cheered by her achievement, Ellen was feeling magnanimous. ‘I probably do – the keys are actually locked in there,’ she pointed up to the bunkhouse, ‘along with my dog.’ She doubted she could unearth a spare set in the main cottage
without a very long search, and Snorkel was barking her head off. ‘Do you think you can get in?’
He nodded at Ellen’s feet and scuffed his way towards the barn.
Ellen turned back to Spurs, calculating whether she could offer the AAAAIIII man a coffee and casually extend the invitation. But to her disappointment he was already sauntering towards the bridleway, shoulders hunched as he lit a cigarette. He glanced over his shoulder and Ellen smiled, then realised that he wasn’t looking at her: he was scowling at a man leaning against the shiny Mercedes on the opposite side of the lane. Disappointed, Ellen regarded the stranger irritably.
‘Hi.’ He beckoned her towards him.
Ellen crossed the road for no man. Staying where she was, she beckoned him in return. But then, as he headed her way, she saw that he was dishy enough to stop traffic, if not to stop her heart clunking unevenly after an encounter with Spurs.
Wearing dark glasses and a big white smile, the Merc driver looked curiously out of place in rural Oddlode on a Sunday morning. He was dressed in an expensive-looking lightweight suit, whose jacket was slung over one shoulder in a decidedly male-model pose. Despite the obvious posturing, he was good-looking enough to get away with it, the rolled-up shirt-sleeves showing deliciously tanned forearms and the loosened tie revealing a neck as smooth and broad as a birch trunk.
Then Ellen spotted a set of house-keys dangling from one of his fingers.
‘Thought I’d pop these by in case you hadn’t had any luck – but it seems you’re resourceful.’ He pocketed the keys and held out his hand to shake hers. ‘Lloyd Fenniweather from Seaton’s International. We spoke on the phone.’
‘Ellen Jamieson.’ She felt his hand enclose hers in a warm, tight squeeze and breathed in the heady mix of aftershave, sex appeal and naked ambition. She’d guessed from the brief telephone conversation that Lloyd would be charmingly offensive. What she hadn’t banked on was that he would be quite so young or so disturbingly good-looking.
‘I’m just heading home,’ he carried on, standing far too close for a first encounter, head dipped towards her as though passing on intimate scandal. ‘My client had to cut today’s viewing short. Flying off to see the cricket, lucky devil. So I thought I’d pop by and introduce myself, check you got in okay. And, boy, am I glad I did.’ On switched the big neon smile and off came the dark glasses, revealing eyes the same Demerara sugar golden brown as his hair.
Lloyd Fenniweather had been born to sell million-pound-plus properties. He looked as though he would be perfectly at home lounging on chesterfields in front of roaring fires, striding across helicopter pads, plunging into true blue pools and rolling around in four-poster beds. He was absolutely, straight-down-the-line, uncomplicatedly, devastatingly handsome. From his floppy, sandy hair, through his straight nose, big smile, square chin and rower’s shoulders to his long legs, he was pin-up hunky. Lloyd Fenniweather was the sort of man Jennifer Jamieson longed for Ellen to bag.
And, rather to her shame, Ellen was superficially attracted to him. He didn’t rock her back on her heels, but the thought of standing on tiptoe and kissing him brought a little rush of a smile to her face. ‘That’s very kind of you.’ The AAAAIIII man was hacking his way into the bunkhouse as fast as his specialist tools allowed: there was no getting out of paying the call-out fee now, she guessed. ‘As you can see, it’s all under control.’ A moment later Snorkel almost knocked the locksmith off the balcony as she flew out, free at last. She bounded down the steps and hurled herself at Ellen.
‘Hello, gorgeous.’ Lloyd was obviously not keen on dogs, but having perfected the art of charming children and animals for professional purposes he managed an awkward pat on the collie’s head. ‘I haven’t conducted a viewing here for a while, and I have to agree that the place does look rather unloved.’
‘Exactly,’ muttered Ellen, as he took another step towards her so that their shoulders brushed.
‘Not that looking a bit rough round the edges puts off the majority of clients,’ he added magnanimously, cranking up the dimmer switch on the big smile. There was a curious double entendre in the softly spoken sentence, and his eyes bubbled like caramel.
‘Not as offputting as being overpriced or having an unfortunate right of way?’ Her eyebrows slid up critically, but his smile didn’t shift as he carried on gazing into her face. Angry questions about lack of for-sale signs, recent viewings or asking-price offers died on Ellen’s lips. It had been a long time since the fast-falling lift of sexual attraction had rooted her to the spot and dragged all her vital organs out of position, but now it had happened twice in twenty-four hours. She felt her stomach lurch, her heart spin cheerfully on its aorta and her legs turn numb. From the way Lloyd Fenniweather’s sugar-sweet eyes were tangled with hers like sticky toffee, she knew he was feeling something similar.
‘I guess I need to talk you through what’s been happening, huh?’ he murmured, in a way that clearly suggested preferably in bed with champagne, massage oil and fur-covered handcuffs.
As the AAAAIIII man lurked uncomfortably to one side, waiting for a signature on his work docket, Ellen and Lloyd savoured a few more naughty-smile moments of mutual desire.
Ellen knew that what she was feeling was so shallow it wouldn’t drown a gnat but, after all the misery with Richard, it was a lovely diversion and far more pleasant than the jolting lurch she felt every time she saw Spurs Belling.
Eventually she dragged her eyes from his, knowing that she’d already been too reckless that day. Being sexually attracted to an estate agent wasn’t something she had ever contemplated, but it would probably feature pretty high on her list of ‘don’t go there’, along with a career in accountancy or a passion for cross-stitch. On first impression, she didn’t even like him – she just wanted to see him naked.
‘Right,’ Lloyd purred reluctantly. ‘I’d better push off if you don’t need me. Plenty of time to talk about Goose Cottage anon. Which reminds me, tomorrow morning . . .’ He pulled an uncomfortable face. ‘I really am flat out until the latter part of the week.’
‘I need to get things moving straight away,’ she insisted, switching gladly from lust to more familiar irritation.
The lingering eye-meet might be over, but Lloyd was still standing close enough to drop his voice to a soft breath so that only she could hear. ‘I wonder . . . can we have a chat about this over dinner, if that’s not too forward of me?’
Ellen took a step back. She hadn’t seen that one coming. And Lloyd had asked so charmingly – almost coyly – that it made him seem absurdly foppish and shy. She had to take a grip on herself not to bat her lashes and press her fingertip coquettishly to her chin. ‘That’s really sweet of you, but I was thinking of something a bit more formal,’ she muttered, knowing that dinner would mean alcohol and mutual attraction and getting caught off-guard. Dinner meant a lot more than chatting about the current property market. ‘This is really quite a serious matter, don’t you think?’
‘Absolutely.’ He nodded earnestly, backing off to reassure her, big white smile leaping back into place. ‘And believe me, I’m giving it my full attention. Let me go through the file and prepare some full notes, and we’ll talk it through. Doing that over supper can’t hurt, can it? Have you been to the Duck Upstream yet?’
Ellen shook her head.
‘Good.’ He was already heading back to his car. ‘In that case I’ll take you there on Friday evening.’
‘Couldn’t we make it any earlier in the week?’ she asked worriedly, impatient to sort out the cottage situation.
He smiled rather smugly over his car door. ‘Sorry – I’m tied up every evening until then – but I’m worth waiting for.’ With that, he tipped his dark glasses over his nose and jumped in.
The locksmith cleared his throat noisily as he handed over his clipboard for a signature. ‘I’ve got a free night Wednesday. Fancy the pub quiz at the Grapes?’
‘Then the shy AAAAIIII man asked me out,’ Ellen told Pheely later, as they s
trolled with their dogs around the village.
‘Shylock Smith!’ Pheely snorted happily.
‘They must have thought I was gagging for it,’ Ellen groaned, ‘because I wiggled my bottom out of the window.’
‘Oh, darling, how delicious!’ Pheely gurgled, swishing her hair back. ‘Two propositions on your first weekend, and I bet Hunter’s writing an anonymous love-letter as we speak. Still, you are terribly pretty. I’d expect nothing less from the red-bloods around here.’
‘I think I need to get a bit more used to being single before I go out on dinner dates.’ Ellen stooped to pick up the stick that Snorkel had dropped for her. ‘I’m going to call the arrogant sod first thing tomorrow and demand a midweek meeting at his office instead.’
‘The AAAAIIII man?’
Ellen rolled her eyes. ‘Lloyd Fenniweather.’
‘Oh, you mustn’t!’ Pheely yelped. ‘He’s scrumptious.’
‘You know him?’
‘Vaguely.’ She peered over a hedge into a cottage garden belonging to one of the Manor Lane weekenders. ‘Ugh – look at all those peonies. Foul. Yes, the Fenniweathers are a local family. Lloyd is their pride and joy. Scholarship boy, first family member to go to university, that sort of thing.’
‘Really?’ Ellen found herself suddenly reassessing him. ‘Not a public-school poser?’
‘Oh, I rather think he is.’ Pheely peered into a window as she passed it. ‘Look at those copper pans! Where do they think they are? Provence? Lloyd,’ she turned to Ellen, green eyes curiously emotional, ‘is one of the rare few who could have escaped the rural backwater but, like me, he’s stayed. More fool him. You’re just what he needs.’ She whistled for Hamlet, who was lolloping around in the road. ‘And he’s just what you need.’
‘I need to find out why my parents’ house isn’t selling.’