‘Actually I don’t. It’s the first time I’ve…er…tried this particular dish.’
‘And home-made bread, too,’ she said.
‘Bread?’ Nick suddenly remembered the rolls. ‘Oh, yes. But not home-made; I haven’t got to that stage yet.’ He put down his glass and retrieved the rolls from the oven, popping them quickly into a basket that had magically appeared. ‘This is just good old “take-and-bake”,’ he continued, marvelling at the way Cassie seemed to think of everything, have it to hand just at the moment it was needed. But then she was a professional. ‘But give me time.’ Behind Veronica’s back, Nick could see Cassie’s hand frantically waving around the pantry door, urging him from the kitchen.
‘I’ll just turn this down a little and we can go and start eating. If you’re hungry?’
‘Well, I did consider stopping off for a hamburger on the way. Just in case,’ Veronica admitted. ‘I didn’t really think you could do this.’ She looked around, still not totally convinced.
‘No?’ He encouraged her towards the dining room. ‘Just wait. You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ And with that he glanced back at the pantry door and winked.
Cassie, her heart beating like an electric food mixer in overdrive—probably something to do with having to grit her teeth to repress a desperate urge to scream—returned to the kitchen.
She placed the washed rice in a bowl ready for the microwave and firmly resisted the temptation to clear away and wash up while she waited for the kettle to boil. She was the cook, not the bottle-washer. Besides, Nick would have a job explaining a magical clear-up job to Veronica.
From her vantage point behind the pantry door she had had a good look at Nick’s beautiful blonde and she didn’t look like the kind of woman who believed in fairies.
Cassie checked the chicken for tenderness. It was just about done. She should have reminded Nick to pop back into the kitchen while his guest was busy with her smoked salmon before she moved on to the next stage of cooking. If Veronica was the kind of guest who liked to ‘help’, or if she had any lingering suspicions about Nick’s probity, she would certainly follow him out into the kitchen and she would notice if the chicken had disappeared from the pan while they ate their salmon.
Like a gift from heaven, the kettle began to whistle. Loudly.
‘No, you can’t do a thing, Veronica. Just take your time. I won’t be a minute.’ Nick’s voice carried to the kitchen. He followed it. ‘What the hell was that?’ he whispered furiously.
‘The kettle. You put it on last time you were in here, don’t you remember?’ He gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘Time to put on the rice,’ she murmured as she poured on the boiling water and set the microwave. ‘Make yourself useful if you’re stopping, Nick. Take the chicken out of the pan and put it on that dish.’
He stuck a fork into the meat and lifted it onto the plate. ‘Damn!’ he said as he splashed the juice on his shirt. Cassie silently handed him a cloth.
‘Don’t worry, it’ll lend you credibility,’ she said, with the sweetest smile.
‘Are you sure there’s nothing I can do, Nick?’ Veronica called.
‘No. Just relax; I’ll be right there,’ he called, avoiding Cassie’s eye. ‘Oh, God, this is a nightmare. I’m beginning to sound just like my mother at Christmas.’
‘Just as long as you don’t start singing carols,’ Cassie said, turning the heat up under the pan juices. ‘Off you go. You’ve been in here quite long enough. You don’t want her to come looking for you.’ Or maybe he did. Maybe he really was suffering from a guilty conscience. ‘I don’t want her to find me, Nick.’
He grabbed the wine bottle from the island. Then, while she was too busy to realise what he was about, he bent and planted a kiss on Cassie’s flushed cheek. ‘Thank you, Cassie.’
Startled, she turned to him. Nose to nose, mouth to mouth they stared at one another. Then he kissed her again, hard and full on her mouth.
She was still standing, too shocked for words, as he disappeared through the kitchen door.
How dared he? How dared he kiss her, when he was going to such pains to romance another woman, a woman he clearly intended to give the grand tour of his pretty-on-the-outside, horrible-on-the-inside house, a tour that would undoubtedly end in his undoubtedly tasteless bedroom?
She lifted her hand to her mouth and wiped the back of it over her lips. Then she had to clench it to stop it from shaking.
Damn the man. And damn his arrogance. It would serve him right if she walked out right now and left him to finish cooking his own dinner. Instead she vented her spleen on a dozen white grapes, slicing angrily through them and gouging out the seeds while she waited for the juices to reduce in the pan. Cassie was still staring at the sauce when Nick walked in with the used plates. She said something very rude and dashed towards the pantry, ignoring the sharp jab of pain warning her that her ankle was not to be treated in such a cavalier fashion.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, catching her arm as she stumbled. ‘Veronica’s looking for a CD to put on. We’ve got a minute.’
She glared at him, jerked her arm away and pushed back a wayward strand of hair. ‘In that case you’d better check the rice to see if it’s done while I finish the chicken.’ She swung away from him and concentrated very hard on warming through the chicken breasts and grapes in the sauce.
‘This rice is done,’ he said, making her jump. ‘I’ll put it in the serving dish, shall I?’
She turned to him. ‘Nick—’
He glanced up. ‘Yes?’
‘Nothing.’ Asking a man why he’d kissed you was not likely to produce a sensible answer. And it would suggest it mattered. Which it didn’t. Mustn’t. Couldn’t. Instead she placed the chicken breasts on two plates and spooned the sauce over them. She added a tiny garnish of grapes and lemon peel.
‘Cassie, this isn’t…that is, I’m not—’
‘Aren’t you?’ She squared up to him, hands on her hips. ‘What’s the matter with you, Nick? Isn’t one woman enough for you?’
‘Nick…’ Veronica’s voice had the lilting, teasing note of a girl who just couldn’t wait.
‘Better not keep the lady waiting,’ she said, turning away from him. ‘It sounds to me as if you’ve hit pay dirt.’
‘Damn it, Cassie—’
‘Careful. She’ll hear you.’ She picked up the plates and pushed them into his hands. They were hot; she was used to that, he was not and she saw him wince. ‘Go and eat your chicken before it gets cold,’ she told him.
‘Fat chance,’ he muttered. ‘What about the rice?’
‘You’ll have to come back for it. Unless you’ve got three hands?’
‘With two women to keep happy I’ll need them, won’t I?’
He hadn’t got two women, Cassie thought furiously, but he didn’t hang around long enough for her to say so, which was perhaps just as well. And she kept her head down when he returned for the rice, busily laying out the strawberries, chantilly cream and the special meringues she had made that morning on a tray.
What was it about the man that was so unsettling her? She had a busy life. A fulfilling career. Pretty much everything she could want. She’d done the love thing and, discovering that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, she’d vowed never to be taken in by a man ever again. Particularly a man like Nick Jefferson. A cuckoo.
Cassie tried hard to ignore the soft murmur of voices seeping into the kitchen from the dining room over the elegant strains of Mozart’s clarinet concerto. She tried hard not to think about what Nick was saying, what he might be doing.
She’d had her chance. Lunch at a restaurant of her choosing instead of slaving over a hot stove for some other woman. And she’d made the right choice. She didn’t need a man to make her complete. Certainly not a man like Nick Jefferson. Been there, done that. Had the broken heart to prove it. Damn!
She dashed away a tear and added coffee cups to the tray, along with the cream and sugar. Nick had bought a box of expen
sive chocolate mints. She opened it and, feeling unbelievably miserable, she ate two. They didn’t help and the gaps she had left in the box glared accusingly up at her. She tipped the rest of the mints out into a small glass dish she found in a cupboard. And, since Veronica clearly had never eaten chocolate in her life and wouldn’t miss it, she ate another one. It just made her feel worse.
Then she heard movement in the dining room. Sick of hiding in the pantry, she fled to the loo. At least in there she could sit down and have a good cry if she wanted to. Not that she did, she told herself firmly, sniffing as quietly as she could.
‘Idiot,’ she muttered, confronting her reflection in the mirror and a pair of over-bright eyes. She sniffed again. Tore off half a yard of loo roll and blew her nose as quietly as she knew how. Then she splashed her face with cold water and reminded herself very firmly that two kisses meant nothing to a man like Nick Jefferson. It was just a hobby with him. Some men played cricket, or fished. He kissed women. Rumour had it that he preferred tall, blonde women, but it seemed that anything would do at a pinch.
When she finally emerged from the mud room, the tray with the strawberries and the coffee had gone and it was time for her to be gone too. Her ankle, which firm strapping and pain-killers had kept down to a bearable ache for most of the day, was beginning to throb and she limped across to the phone and dialled the number on a little yellow note stuck to the wall. It seemed to ring for ever.
‘Come on,’ she urged the inanimate receiver, desperate to get away. If she wasn’t here she wouldn’t have to think about Nick and Veronica lingering over coffee and brandy. She could pretend that Veronica had called for a taxi and gone home at a respectable hour. Fat chance.
‘Melchester Taxis,’ a voice finally informed her. She asked for a taxi and was told that they were busy, that it would take about twenty minutes to get to her. She was furious with herself for not anticipating how long it might take. But there was nothing she could do except wait.
The clock on the wall seemed to stand still. Only the occasional burst of laughter from the dining room punctuated seconds that moved like minutes, minutes that moved like hours.
Five minutes. Then ten. Eleven. Twelve. Cassie slid off the stool and decided that she would rather wait outside than endure another second in Nick’s kitchen, listening to the murmur of voices while Nick wooed the fair Veronica.
The back door was bolted and the bolt was old and stiff. She bent down to work at it, fiddling it up and down. She was still trying to slide it back when she heard Veronica’s high heels tapping across the ceramic tiles of the kitchen floor. ‘Of course I must help you to wash up,’ she declared, in clear, bright tones that seemed so close she might almost have been in the mud room with Cassie. ‘It’s the least I can do after such a wonderful meal.’
‘There’s no need, really,’ Nick protested. ‘I have someone who comes in to clean. She’ll do it in the morning.’
‘That’s disgusting. Only a man would leave washing-up overnight for someone else. It won’t take a moment.’ There was the sound of running water. ‘You make a start, Nick. I’ll just use your loo and then I’ll dry up.’ Oh, neat. That way she won’t be the one with dish-pan hands. Cassie, infinitely cheered by the thought of Nick up to his elbows in dish water, straightened from her efforts with the bolt. And with Veronica upstairs she could slip out. ‘Just point me in the right direction.’
‘There’s one through there.’
Through there? Through where? In answer to her silent question the mud-room door began to open.
Oh, good grief, he thought she’d already gone. Cassie gave the bolt one last desperate tug. It gave a loud squeal as she lifted the slider, but still refused to budge.
Had Veronica heard? Apparently not. But Nick must have, because she heard him move quickly across the kitchen. ‘Actually, that one is a bit basic,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’d be more comfortable upstairs, Veronica.’
Veronica had a silvery laugh. ‘For goodness’ sake, Nick, don’t make such a fuss. Basic is fine.’
‘There might not be a towel,’ he improvised. ‘Or soap. I’d better check.’
‘Heavens, Nick, anyone would think you’d got something to hide. Skeletons in the…um…closet.’ Nick obligingly laughed at her little joke. ‘You haven’t got a cordon bleu chef tucked away in there by any chance, have you?’
‘A chef?’ Nick managed to laugh at that, too. But to Cassie’s ears not quite so convincingly. ‘How suspicious you are, Veronica. If that’s what you think, you’d better go ahead and look for yourself.’
At that point Cassie stopped eavesdropping and took the only way out that was left to her. She slipped off her shoes, opened the door to the stairs and, ignoring her protesting ankle, fled up them.
CHAPTER NINE
STANDING in the kitchen, contemplating a sink full of dirty dishes and wondering just how quickly he could persuade his unwanted guest to leave, Nick Jefferson had an idea.
He had just finished his call when he heard something unexpected and as he hung up he lifted his head and stared at the ceiling. There was someone upstairs, walking across the creaking old floorboards.
Cassie?
He had assumed she was long gone. She’d made her feelings plain enough so it seemed obvious that she would beat a retreat the minute she was free. So why was she still here?
He opened the mud-room door, planning a quick dash upstairs to find out what was happening, but Veronica was ahead of him, peering up the stairway. Had she heard Cassie, too?
‘Two sets of stairs, Nick?’ she enquired, turning to him, her face giving nothing away. But then it never did. Unlike Cassie, whose eyes betrayed everything she was thinking. Or almost everything. Questions about her husband just provoked a blankness. The hurt, whatever it was, was buried too deep to be teased out of her.
He smiled briefly. ‘Of course, Veronica. One for going up and one for coming down.’ She gave him an old-fashioned look and he shrugged. ‘There were a lot more originally. One for each of the cottages. This one was left when the place was converted a few years ago by someone with a couple of children. So that they wouldn’t traipse mud through the house.’
‘Good thinking. Can I go up?’ His brain seemed to be on some kind of a ‘go slow’, refusing to come up with some reasonable excuse to stop her. ‘You did say I could look around.’
He shrugged. ‘Sure. I’ll show you around when we’ve done the washing-up.’
‘That’ll keep.’ She extended her hand. ‘Come on.’
He looked-at the hand, the slightly teasing smile that lifted the corners of her mouth, her eyes. A week ago he’d have accepted such an invitation without a second thought. Too late he discovered that he preferred Veronica cool and distant. ‘You’d be safer going up the main staircase in those heels,’ he said. ‘This one’s a bit…worn.’
‘No problem.’ She kicked off her shoes and since he hadn’t taken her hand she grasped his and set off up the stairs. He had no choice but to follow her and hope the creaking would warn Cassie that they were on their way.
Cassie had been standing at the top of the stairs surveying the confusing layout of narrow corridors, the seemingly endless numbers of doors and wishing she’d taken the guided tour Nick had offered so that she could find her way to the main staircase and escape. All she could do was wait for Veronica to leave the mud room. Except she didn’t.
She listened with growing concern to the other woman. Nick’s voice was muffled, but it didn’t take much imagination to know what his answer would be as Veronica invited herself upstairs. As they began to mount the stairs, she fled down the nearest corridor, desperately looking for the main staircase.
‘This place is so quaint, Nick. What’s that old rhyme? “There was a crooked man and he built a crooked house…”’
‘I don’t think it goes quite like that.’
‘No? Oh, well…’ She apparently stopped to look out of the small round window at the top of the stairs. ‘And what a lov
ely garden. Is that another of your unexpected hobbies?’
Veronica—’
‘Is that a Bourbon rose? That pink one?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t have time for gardening. Someone comes in once a week to keep it tidy.’
Their voices were terribly close and Cassie abandoned her search for the stairs and opened the first door she came to, desperately hoping it wasn’t a cupboard. It wasn’t. She stepped inside, pressing her back to the door while she gathered her breath. Then she looked around and barely choked back a groan.
It was Nick’s bedroom. It had to be. The bed was huge and low, the sheets were black, the carpet pale grey. The monochrome designer had struck again. But at least her worst nightmare wasn’t realised. The bed was not covered with some exotic animal skin but with a perfectly ordinary duvet, covered by a perfectly ordinary black duvet cover. If black bedlinen could ever be described as ordinary. Maybe the girl had been a vegetarian. She must remember to ask Nick for her name, just to make sure she never used her.
‘Is this your room, Nick?’ Still leaning back against the door, Cassie heard the thumb latch rattle and felt a firm shove as it was pushed from the other side. She quickly stepped to one side so that when it was opened she would be hidden behind it. ‘Oh, yes.’ Veronica, unexpectedly, seemed to be finding it hard to smother a giggle.
‘As I said, the whole house needs decorating.’
‘Actually I rather like black sheets.’ Veronica began to advance into the bedroom. ‘They’re so wonderfully obvious. You know exactly what’s going on in the mind of a man who would choose them.’
‘I didn’t choose them.’
Veronica ignored this rather pained response. ‘Are they satin?’ She crossed to the bed and touched them. ‘No. Oh, well, you can’t have everything.’
‘Veronica—’
Cassie could see everything through the crack between the door and the architrave. Veronica was standing beside the bed and now she turned and smiled at Nick, lowering dark glossy lashes that appeared to have been individually coated with at least three coats of mascara. Then she slid her hand beneath her hair and lifted it seductively from her neck. ‘I haven’t thanked you yet for that lovely dinner, have I, Nick?’
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