by Liz Fielding
‘As bad-tempered as any man who’s being told to change the habits of a lifetime and give up everything he loves…’
Before she could say any more, Xandra burst through the door and flung her arms around her grandmother.
‘Gran! How’s Granddad?’
‘He’ll be fine. He just needs to take more care of himself. But what about you, young lady? What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at school?’ Then, clearly knowing her granddaughter better than most, ‘I suppose it’s got something to do with your mother?’
‘I don’t care about my mother. I just wanted to be here so that I can help Granddad with the garage.’
‘Oh, Xandra!’ Then, with a sigh, ‘What have you done?’
‘You didn’t know she was here?’ George asked, following his daughter into the kitchen and this time he’d been getting his hands dirty-presumably in an effort to get the job done as quickly as possible so that he could get rid of her and close down the garage.
‘I would have mentioned it.’
‘You’ve a lot on your plate.’ He crossed to the sink and, squishing soap on his hands, began to wash them thoroughly. ‘How are things at the hospital?’
‘It would help if he wasn’t fretting so much. The garage is his life.’
‘He’s going to have to widen his horizons.’ He picked up a towel. ‘If it’s any help, tell him I’ll take care of the Bentley myself,’ he said, drying his hands. ‘But I’ll have to get in touch with the owner of the restoration job in the end bay. The baby Austin. He’ll need to start looking for another garage-’
‘It’s mine,’ Xandra cut in with a touch of defiance as she anticipated disapproval.
George frowned. ‘Yours?’
‘Granddad bought it for my birthday,’ she said, swiftly bending to make a fuss of the cat, as if she knew she’d just thrown a hand grenade into the room. ‘It’s a restoration project. We’ve been doing it together.’
No one else was looking at George and only she saw the effect that had on him. As if he’d been hit, winded, all the air driven from his body. A big man destroyed by a few words from a slip of a girl.
Love, she thought. Only love could hurt you like that and she ached to go to him, hold him.
‘I’ll go and give Mike Jackson a call about the Bentley,’ his mother said, oblivious to the tension-or perhaps choosing to ignore it. ‘He’s got a wedding next week and I know how worried he’s been.’
‘I’ll do it,’ George said, clearly needing to get out of the room for a moment. ‘I need to talk to him.’ Then his eyes met hers and in an instant the barriers were back up. Nothing showing on the surface. ‘Sorry, Mum, I should have introduced Annie.’
‘We’ve met.’ Mrs Saxon turned to her with a smile. ‘I’m so sorry, my dear. I didn’t thank you for getting on with dinner.’ She patted her arm distractedly. ‘We’ll talk later but right now I really must go and call my sister-in-law, let her know how her brother is. Xandra, come and say hello to Great-Aunt Sarah.’
Annie wanted to say something, talk about Xandra, ask him what had gone wrong, but this didn’t come under polite conversation and she had no idea where to begin.
As if sensing the danger, George crossed to the stove, hooked his finger through the mash and tasted it.
‘Not bad for a first effort,’ he said.
‘Not bad? I’ll have you know I’ve eaten in some of the finest restaurants in London and that stands comparison with the best.’
‘Which restaurants?’
Annie had reeled off the names of half a dozen of the most expensive restaurants in the capital in her absolute determination to impress him before she realised that she was giving away rather more than she’d ever intended.
He lifted a quizzical brow. ‘What was that you were saying about modesty?’
She pulled a face. ‘No point in being coy. Of course you’d only get a tiny spoonful.’
‘The more you pay, the less you get,’ he agreed, taking a second dip in the potato. ‘Maybe that’s why you’re so thin. You’d have been better occupied doing a little home cooking and saving your money for a more roadworthy car for your getaway.’
She rapped his knuckles sharply with a spoon and having scooped the potato into a serving bowl, bent to put it in the warming oven.
George regarded her thoughtfully for a moment before he shrugged and said, ‘How long has your friend had that sorry heap?’ he asked.
‘Are you referring to Lydia’s pride and joy? Only a week or two,’ she said, concentrating on straining the carrots and peas. Then, realising that it wasn’t an idle question, ‘You’ve found something else?’
‘I don’t suppose there’s the faintest chance that she bought it from a garage that offered her some kind of warranty?’ he asked.
‘No. She bought it from a woman who was going to use the money to take her grandchildren on holiday for Christmas.’
Lydia had been eager to tell her all about the one careful lady owner when she’d offered to lend it to her. Pride of ownership coming through loud and clear as she’d explained that, although her car wasn’t new, it had been well cared for.
‘She didn’t happen to be a vicar’s wife too, by any chance?’
‘Excuse me?’
He sighed. ‘Did she see any documents? Service record, receipt? Did this kindly grandmother invite her into her house for tea and biscuits while they did the deal or did your friend buy it off the side of the road?’
‘I don’t know about the documents, but I do know that the woman lived on the other side of London so she offered to bring the car to Lydia to save her the journey.’
‘How kind of her.’ His intonation suggested she had been anything but kind and he underlined it by saying, ‘She must have thought it was her birthday and Christmas all rolled into one.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Your friend was sold a cut’n’shut, Annie. A car welded together out of two wrecks. The front half of one car and the back half of another.’
She shook her head. ‘That can’t be right. She’d bought it new-’
‘The classic “one careful lady owner”.’ He shook his head. ‘Your sweet little old lady sold your friend a deathtrap, Annie. If that abomination had come apart while you were driving at any speed…’
He left the outcome to her imagination.
Her imagination, in full working order, duly obliged with a rerun of the carefree way she’d driven down the motorway, relishing her freedom as she’d buzzed along in the fast lane, overtaking slower moving traffic.
All it would have taken at that speed would have been a small piece of debris, a bit of a bump and she could have ended up in the path of one of the lorries thundering west…
And if it hadn’t been her, it would, sooner or later, have been Lydia.
‘Xandra hadn’t seen one before but, when she spotted the welding, she asked me to take a look.’
So that was how he’d got his hands dirty.
‘You do understand what this means? It’ll have to be crushed. I can’t be responsible for letting it back on the road.’
‘Crushed?’ Right now, she would be glad never to see it again but-
‘And any documentation that came with it will be fake,’ he added pointedly. ‘This would be a good time to come clean if you’ve been economical with the truth about the car’s provenance, since I will have to inform the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.’ His look was long and intense, demanding an answer.
‘I’ve got the picture, George.’
‘I can leave it a day or two if it’s going to be a problem?’ he pressed.
It wasn’t necessary, but her heart did a little loop the loop that he was prepared to cover for her. Give her getaway time.
‘Thanks, but I won’t strain your probity, George. The car is properly registered in the name of Lydia Young. She’s the only victim here.’ Then she groaned. ‘Lydia! She’s spent all that money on something that’s absolutely worthless.�
� She looked up at him. ‘I imagine the question of insurance no longer arises?’
He shook his head and she let slip that new word she was finding all kinds of uses for, but it didn’t help. This went far beyond a slightly shocking expletive.
‘How could anyone do such a wicked thing?’ she asked.
‘For money, Annie.’ He made a move as if to put his hand on her arm in a gesture of comfort, but instead lifted it to push his fingers through his thick, dark hair. ‘This is going to totally screw up your plans, isn’t it?’
‘I didn’t actually have anything as organised as a plan,’ she admitted. ‘Just a general direction.’
‘Running blind is never a good idea.’ Then, almost, it seemed, against his will, ‘What will you do now?’
She lifted her shoulders in a resigned shrug. ‘Call a cab and go to the motel.’ She managed a wry smile. ‘Spend the evening working on a plan.’
‘Have something to eat first,’ he said.
‘Thank you. Both of you,’ she added. ‘I mean that. I’m really grateful that you were so thorough.’
‘George Saxon and Son might not look much at the moment, but it was the finest garage in the area for nearly a century.’
‘Until it ran out of sons.’
‘Until it ran out of sons who wanted to be a replica of their father.’
‘It’s an equal-opportunities world, George.’
‘Actually, when I asked what you’re going to do, I meant without a car.’
Then, as Xandra returned, he leaned back against the table and folded his arms, rather like a shield, she thought.
‘You’ll be stranded on the wrong side of the ring road at the motel,’ he said, ‘and taxis aren’t cheap.’
‘Isn’t there a bus service?’
‘One or two a day, maybe, but it’s a motel,’ he pointed out. ‘A motor hotel. There isn’t a lot of demand for public transport.’
‘Annie could stay here tonight,’ Xandra intervened, in just the same casual manner as she’d handed her the door key and invited her to make herself a cup of tea.
George looked at the girl with something close to exasperation.
‘What?’ she demanded. ‘There’s plenty of room and Gran won’t mind.’
That he did couldn’t have been more obvious.
‘I think your grandmother has quite enough to cope with at the moment without taking in a total stranger,’ Annie said, rescuing him. ‘But thank you for the offer.’
She took her cellphone from her back pocket but, before she could switch it on, he took it from her with a warning look.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘it would be easier if you stayed here. I’ll need you to deal with the paperwork in the morning.’ Then, ‘I’ll have more than enough to do without driving over to the motel.’
She doubted that, but she knew better than to take advantage of a man who’d been put in an impossible position. Even if he had taken advantage of her and kissed her.
‘No, really. You’ve done enough.’
‘True,’ he said distantly, returning her phone, ‘but I’ve no doubt you’ll be the perfect guest and help with the washing-up.’
That really was too much.
‘Maybe you should be the perfect son and buy your mother a dishwasher,’ she replied, responding in kind.
‘Sorry. I flunked that one years ago.’ Then, as the door opened behind him, ‘You’ve no objection to Annie staying, have you, Mum?’
‘Where else would she go?’ Then, as Annie placed the pie and vegetables on the table and she sank wearily into a chair, the phone began to ring.
‘I’ll go, Gran,’ Xandra said, leaping up.
‘No…It might be the hospital.’
George followed her from the room but was back in seconds. ‘It’s one of my mother’s friends. She said to start without her.’
‘We can wait.’
‘The way she’s settled herself in the armchair, I suspect it’s going to be a long one. No point in letting good food spoil.’
She ducked her head in an attempt to hide the blush that coloured her cheekbones at the simple compliment and, despite everything, he felt an answering warmth as he watched her cut into the pie. She was such a mixture of contradictions.
Assertive, poised, innocent…
She handed him a plate, then, as he helped himself to vegetables, she served Xandra and herself before putting the dishes back in the warming oven for his mother.
Xandra made a deeply appreciative moaning noise. ‘Real food. This is worth getting grounded for.’
‘It is good,’ Annie said swiftly, presumably to stop him from saying something inflammatory. Then spoiled it all by adding, ‘For pastry like this I’d come home every week.’
‘Once a year would be nearer the mark,’ Xandra said.
‘Are you suggesting it’s up to the standard of all those smart London restaurants you’re used to?’ he enquired, pretending he hadn’t heard. ‘Always assuming they served anything as basic as meat pie and mashed potato.’
‘It’s absolutely delicious,’ she said quickly, in an attempt to rescue the blunder. ‘But then I can’t actually remember the last time I was this hungry.’
From the way she was tucking in, it was clear that her thinness wasn’t the result of a desire to be size zero and he wondered what, exactly, she’d been going through that had driven her to fly from home. And, more to the point, who she’d made that ‘I’ll be there’ promise to.
The one with the desperate ‘God help me’ tag.
He pushed away the thought, not wanting to go there.
For the moment there was colour in her cheeks and, as she laughed out loud at something Xandra had said, her face was animated, alive. Then, as if she could sense his eyes on her, she turned, looked at him over those ridiculous frames.
The impact was almost physical.
Forget the fact that she was too thin, that dark smudges marred the porcelain-fine skin beneath her eyes.
It wasn’t that instant belt-in-the-gut sexual attraction that normally grabbed his attention and he was honest enough to admit that if he’d passed her in the street, head down, he probably wouldn’t have given her a second glance.
But he didn’t believe for a minute that she’d ever walk along a street with her head down.
Despite that oddly disturbing vulnerability, she possessed a rare presence, an ability to look him straight in the eye, hold her own in a confrontation.
Not the kind of woman, he’d have said, to run away from anything.
He pushed back his chair the minute he’d finished eating. ‘I’d better go and put Mike Jackson out of his misery,’ he said, desperate to get away from Annie’s unsettling presence. He made a general gesture that took in the table. ‘Thanks for doing this…’
‘I was glad to help.’ She continued to hold him captive with nothing more than a look for what felt like endless seconds. ‘Can I get you anything else?’ she asked as he lingered.
What on earth was the matter with him?
Annie was the kind of woman that no man with an atom of sense would get entangled with, especially not one who, having learned his lesson the hard way, could spot trouble a mile off.
‘Coffee?’ she prompted.
‘If I need anything I’ll get it myself,’ he said, forcing himself to move.
CHAPTER SIX
A NNIE felt the tension evaporate as George left the room, but it felt surprisingly empty too. He was very contained, with a rare stillness. He made no unnecessary movements, had been terse to the point of rudeness throughout supper. And yet his presence still filled the room.
What could have happened to cause such a rift between him and his family? Was it just the garage, or had a teenage wedding that had evidently fallen apart faster than the ink had dried on the marriage certificate been the real cause of family friction?
And what about his daughter who, now that her father had left the room, had slumped down in her chair, all that chippy bravado
gone.
It was obvious that she craved his attention. She might take every chance to wound her father, but when he wasn’t looking her eyes followed him with a kind of desperation.
‘Can I suggest something?’
The only response was a shrug of those narrow shoulders, making her look more like a sulky six-year-old than sixteen.
‘Write a note to Mrs Warburton.’
She was instantly back on the defensive. ‘I’m not sorry for taking the car.’
‘Maybe not, but you’re old enough to know that you must have given her a very nasty fright.’ She waited a moment but, getting no response, said, ‘Why did you do it?’
‘Because I could?’ she offered, giving her the same barbed I-don’t-care-what-you-think-of-me stare that she used to hurt her father and she felt a pang of tenderness for the girl.
‘If you wanted to come home to see your father I’m sure she would have understood.’
‘I didn’t! It’s got nothing to do with him!’ She glared at her. ‘I’ll write when I’m ready, okay? If I’d known you were going to nag I wouldn’t have asked you to stay.’
‘You’re right,’ she said, standing up, gathering the dishes. ‘I’ve abused your hospitality.’ Then, ‘Time to wash up, I think.’
‘Oh, right. Wash the dishes? Write a letter?’ Xandra held out her hands as if balancing the choice. ‘Very subtle.’
‘The two have a lot in common. They both need doing and neither gets easier for leaving. And I’ll bet I’m an amateur in the nagging stakes compared with your gran. As for your father…’
‘If he cared what I did he’d be here instead of sending me off to school so that he could live on a beach,’ she declared sullenly. ‘He might be able to fix it so that they’ll take me back, but I won’t stay so he might as well save his money.’
‘Where do you want to go?’