Jonas held her eyes. ‘I didn’t ring you the moment I received confirmation because I wanted to hand you the letter in person and bask in your gratitude. It’s a long time since that boy climbed up to a window to impress a girl, but it was the same motivation, Avery. So shall we start again?’
Start what? ‘By all means,’ she said lightly. ‘It wouldn’t do for me to upset my landlord.’
‘True. I rather like the idea of having a hold over you,’ he said with satisfaction, and then sobered abruptly as he inspected the shop and its half-gutted neighbour. ‘A good thing there’s an alley between this and the flower shop.’
‘When I saw it my first reaction was to find new premises,’ Avery admitted. ‘The shop has always been too small for the services we offer, but the rent is reasonable and its location is good, so I’d rather stay if possible. What do you think of the damage to my place?’
‘It looks superficial, but I’ll have my people check it out right away. You’ll probably want to use local tradesmen to redecorate, but Mercom will foot the bill. Get someone to do a rush job for you.’
Avery introduced Jonas to her fellow leaseholders, and looked on in amusement as the new landlord chatted easily with each one in turn.
He thanked her as they walked back to his car. ‘Once I’ve driven you home I’ve got meetings with various people this afternoon, to tie up a few loose ends. I leave again first thing tomorrow, so have dinner with me tonight to celebrate the deal.’
Instead of jumping at the invitation Avery gave it some thought. In some ways it was good to live in a small town, where she was known to everyone, but in others—as in this instance—it was a drawback. Jonas Mercer’s identity and his firm’s plans for the land he’d bought would soon be common knowledge after his tour of inspection this afternoon. The jungle drums would go into overdrive if she was seen socialising with the head of Mercom for the second time in one day.
‘A plain, honest-to-God no will do,’ said Jonas dryly as he drove off.
She shook her head. ‘I was about to say yes, but only if I cook something at home. I like to keep a low social profile.’
‘You’re ashamed to be seen out with me,’ he accused.
She shot him a kindling look. ‘Do you want dinner at my place or not?’
‘You know damn well I do. Order in and I’ll foot the bill. There must be a Chinese or Indian in town?’
‘Good idea. You’re not just a pretty face after all,’ she said in approval.
‘That’s you, Avery Crawford, not me.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll be back here at eight. Sort out a decorator, and anything else you need, and let me know the details over dinner.’
Avery felt a lot more pleased with life as she went into her house to report that the new landlord was footing the bill to refurbish the premises in Stow Street and that cleaning up and painting could start right away. There were relieved smiles all round.
Once Helen and Louise had left for the day Frances demanded a detailed report on the working lunch with Jonas Mercer.
‘I told him that when I saw the damage on Saturday night my first thought was new premises. Which is true enough. We could do with space for a proper fitting room.’
‘But that would mean higher rent and a far less appealing landlord!’
Avery grinned. ‘An inescapable truth, which decided me to stick with Stow Street.’
‘So are relations more cordial now between you and Jonas?’ asked Frances.
‘Yes. We still have things to discuss, so I’ve asked him to dinner here tonight.’
‘Have you, indeed? What’s on the menu?’
‘He suggested ordering in.’
Frances shook her head. ‘Impress him with some home cooking. Men find that sexy.’
Avery’s eyebrows rose. ‘Was that your reaction when Philip cooked lunch for you yesterday?’
‘Yes,’ said her friend candidly. ‘It’s the first time a man has ever made a meal for me, and I loved it. Grill our new landlord a steak, or whatever, and he’ll probably say yes to whatever you want,’ she added, batting her eyelashes.
‘In that case I’d better nip down to the shops as soon as we finish for the day.’
When she got back from her shopping trip Avery was touched to find Frances had stayed on to work magic with a duster and a vacuum cleaner.
‘I’ve only done downstairs,’ she warned.
‘You shouldn’t have done any of it. And downstairs is quite enough. He’s only coming to dinner, Frances! But thanks a lot. You’re an angel. Now I can get on with the meal. Not that there’s much cooking involved. What do you think of rib-eye steak, green salad and roast potatoes?’
‘Perfect. Straight to any man’s heart. I might try it on Philip tomorrow.’
‘You mean you’re not seeing him tonight?’
‘He wanted to.’ Frances pulled on her coat, smiling wryly. ‘But these days caution’s my middle name, so I held out for Tuesday.’
Shortly before Jonas was due to arrive the roasting potatoes were scenting the air, the steaks were ready to grill, and the salad greens lacked only a splash of dressing.
Thanks to the hot steam in her shower, and more during her cooking, Avery’s hair curled in wild profusion on her shoulders. She’d deliberately painted her lips the exact shade of her clinging crimson sweater, and for good measure she’d hung big gypsy hoops in her ears. But to make it clear that it was just a casual kitchen supper she wore jeans, and hadn’t bothered with candles or one of her mother’s tablecloths.
Jonas arrived a minute before the clock struck eight, and stood transfixed when Avery opened the door to him.
‘Hi. You’re on time,’ she said, smiling.
‘And you’re a vision!’ He handed her a bottle of wine and a great sheaf of tulips. ‘Perfect. If I were an artist I’d paint you—just as you are right now.’
‘Why, thank you. What gorgeous flowers. Come through to the kitchen so I can put them in water.’
Jonas followed her along the hall, sniffing the air. ‘The food’s here already? It was supposed to be my treat.’
‘I thought I’d cook.’ Avery put the flowers in the kitchen sink and bent to search in a cupboard for a vase, taking her time over it to let him enjoy her back view. She flipped her hair back as she straightened, and met a look in Jonas’s eyes which brought heat to her face. ‘What would you like to drink? I’ve got some red wine opened ready, or you can have a beer. Do sit down,’ she added.
‘Wine would be good,’ he said. ‘Can I pour one for you?’
‘Yes, please.’ She switched on the grill. ‘How do you like your steak?’
‘Medium rare.’ Jonas filled two glasses and hooked out a chair, taking undisguised pleasure in watching her. ‘This is a very good way to spend an evening,’ he said, with such lazy satisfaction that Avery couldn’t help smiling at him as she arranged the tulips in a fat blue jug. ‘I had a chat with the manager of the hotel about the fire earlier on,’ he went on. ‘Apparently no one knows who was responsible.’
‘Except me. I can identify one of the culprits.’ Avery put the steaks to grill. She turned to face him. ‘He stumbled under a streetlight as he ran after his chums. I saw his face clearly.’
‘Did you, indeed?’ Jonas’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you going to do anything about it?’
‘Are you asking as head of Mercom, or merely from curiosity?’
‘Nothing you tell me will go any further, if that’s the way you want to play it.’
‘I do.’ Avery eyed him in silence for a moment. ‘For your ears only, his name is Daniel Morrell—son of George, our friendly local property developer.’
CHAPTER FOUR
JONAS gave a low whistle. ‘Daddy wouldn’t like that at all!’
‘Daddy doesn’t have to find out,’ said Avery with emphasis. ‘Daniel knows I spotted him, so I think the best punishment is to just let him stew, poor kid.’
‘The “poor kid” was responsible for a fire,’ Jonas reminded her.<
br />
‘With George for a father, wouldn’t you kick over the traces occasionally?’
‘My traces never involved pyrotechnics.’
‘Just girls, I suppose!’
‘Mostly,’ he admitted smugly.
‘At least Dan’s sins weren’t intentional. It must have been a faulty rocket.’
‘But he set it off in dangerous proximity to property— Mercom property,’ Jonas added. ‘But because you’ve told me in confidence I won’t say a word—those steaks smell good.’
Avery spun round to check, and switched off the grill. She transferred the pan of potatoes from the oven and slid sizzling steaks onto warmed plates.
‘No first course,’ she said, pushing the salad bowl towards him. ‘This is it, so help yourself and eat.’
The potatoes had been roasted to crisp perfection over unpeeled garlic cloves and sprigs of rosemary, and Jonas made relishing noises as he tasted them. ‘Someone with looks like yours shouldn’t cook like this, Avery.’
She eyed him warily. ‘Why not?’
He smiled. ‘It’s not fair on a poor defenceless male.’
‘If you answer to that description you’re the first of the species I’ve ever met! I took a chance on the garlic because I like it,’ she added.
‘The entire meal is perfect. Tell me, Avery Crawford,’ he added, ‘you’re beautiful, successful, and you can even cook—so why—’
‘Why hasn’t some man snapped me up long since?’ she finished, resigned.
His lips twitched. ‘It’s a subject that’s obviously come up before. So why are you still single?’
Avery shrugged. ‘The beauty is illusion—courtesy of my hair and a few cosmetics—and my business is successful because I concentrate all my energies on it, with no calls on my time from man or child. When I come home at night I please myself, instead of cooking meals and ironing shirts and so on.’
His eyebrows rose. ‘Is that how you think of marriage?’
‘I’m self-supporting and I own my own home, so I don’t think of it at all.’
‘Love and companionship usually come into it somewhere.’
She shook her head. ‘Too much of a gamble. Past relationships promised both, and in the end failed on all counts. But with no marriage lines to cloud the issue I was able to walk away each time.’
‘With no regrets?’
Her eyes fell. ‘Oh, yes. There were plenty of those.’
Jonas looked at her downcast face for a moment, then laid down his knife and fork. ‘That was the best meal I’ve ever eaten,’ he informed her.
‘Thank you, kind sir.’ Avery bobbed a mock curtsy as she got up to collect their plates. ‘But you liked the meal at the Fleece, surely?’
He shook his head. ‘No restaurant food can compare with a meal enjoyed in the company of the beautiful woman who cooked it.’
Amused by the smooth flattery, Avery got busy with coffee. ‘No pudding, I’m afraid.’ She handed him the tray. ‘Would you bring it into the other room, please?’
‘If you mean that deep freeze of a drawing room, I’d rather stay here in this nice warm kitchen,’ Jonas said bluntly.
She smiled mysteriously, and beckoned him along the hall to a door near the foot of the stairs. “‘Come into my parlour,” said the spider to the fly.’
The small book-lined room was comfortably shabby, with French windows hung with tawny velvet curtains. Other than a desk with a computer, the only piece of furniture was a sofa drawn up to a log fire crackling behind a screen made of pierced brass petals. ‘My study,’ she announced, and put another log on the fire. ‘Those windows look out on the back garden.’
Jonas put the tray down on the desk and looked around in approval. ‘Now, this I like.’
Her face shadowed. ‘This was my mother’s retreat when she came back home to live after my father died.’
He gave her a searching look as he took the coffee she poured for him. ‘You haven’t mentioned your father before.’
Avery took the other corner of the sofa. Her first instinct was to change the subject, as usual. But for once she found that she wanted to talk about her father. And it was supposed to be easier to confide in strangers. Not that Jonas felt like a stranger any more.
‘John Avery was a policeman,’ she told him. ‘My mother met him just as she finished training in London. It was love at first sight, and a baby on the way soon afterwards. They arranged a quick register office ceremony in Bermondsey, but two days before the wedding my father was fatally injured during an arrest. So Ellen Crawford had to return to her home town in the role of unmarried mother. They didn’t have single parents in those days.’ Avery smiled sardonically. ‘It may sound like pure soap opera to you, but thirty years ago that kind of thing still mattered in a small town like this, where everyone knows everyone else.’
‘Did it matter to you?’
‘Only because it did to my mother and my grandparents. So to give them something to be proud of I worked my socks off to stay top of the class right through school.’ She shrugged. ‘The same motivation kept me here after my mother died instead of hotfooting it back to the City. By making Avery Alterations a success I’m thumbing my nose at certain people with long memories.’
‘How about your father’s family?’
‘My mother used to take me to Bermondsey to see them when I was young, but they died when I was in primary school.’ Avery smiled at him. ‘There. You know things about me I’ve never told anyone else. You’re a good listener, Jonas Mercer. Maybe you should have been a priest.’
He shook his head emphatically. ‘Not the life for me.’
‘No sex, you mean?’
He laughed. ‘Sadly no vocation either!’ He paused, eyeing her thoughtfully. ‘If you’ve never spoken about your father before, Avery, your past relationships can’t have been very close. I assume one of them involved Paul Morrell?’
She nodded. ‘We knew each other by sight as children, but oddly enough we met as adults for the first time in London through friends. As I mentioned before, his parents didn’t like that at all.’
‘Why?’
Avery smiled cynically. ‘When my grandmother died, shortly after my grandfather, my mother inherited the house, but there was so little cash to go with it that she took in all the dressmaking jobs she could get to support us. Paul’s mother was a regular customer, and I was the one who delivered the finished garments to her. One way and another, I don’t make it to the Morrells’ social list.’ She got up to refill their cups. ‘Would you like some brandy with this?’
‘No, thanks.’ Jonas stretched out his legs comfortably. ‘I have everything a man could ask for right now.’ He turned his head to look at her. ‘I won’t ask for more just yet.’
‘Are you the kind of man who asks?’
‘Always,’ he said piously. ‘My mother taught me to say please and thank you and always see old ladies across the road.’
‘Whether they want to cross or not?’
He grinned. ‘What I’m trying to say, Avery Crawford, is that however much I may lust for you I won’t act on it until you want me to.’
She eyed him curiously. ‘You’re certain I will at some stage, then?’
‘Positive.’
‘So Frances was right.’
Jonas shot her a narrowed look. ‘About what?’
‘She says men find cooking sexy. I can’t base that on personal experience, because my past relationships were in London, where meals are just a phone call away. Not,’ Avery added hastily, ‘that this is a relationship.’
‘I am your landlord,’ he pointed out. ‘You lease property from me. So in my book that’s definitely a relationship. Who knows? It may grow closer with time. I can wait.’
She smiled. ‘You don’t climb through bedroom windows any more, you mean?’
He laid his hand on his heart. ‘If it meant open arms greeting me in yours I’d be happy to risk life and limb!’
Avery shook her head, amused.
‘I’d want to know a whole lot more about a man before I got to that stage.’
‘My life is an open book,’ he assured her. ‘With me, Avery Crawford, what you see is what you get.’
‘Not all the time! You were pretty secretive about taking over as my new landlord.’
‘As I’ve said before, I had to wait until it was official.’ He sighed. ‘I’d hoped you’d smother me with gratitude, but all I got for my pains was a ticking off. Twice, if we count this morning.’
Avery’s colour rose. ‘I’ve said I’m sorry, and I’ve cooked dinner for you. That’s as grateful as I get. Smothering isn’t my style.’
‘I’m about to make you an offer which might change your mind.’ Jonas laughed at the look she threw at him. ‘You’re not very big on trust, Ms Crawford.’
‘Maybe not, but I’m very big on curiosity. What do you have in mind?’
‘The betting chain has decided to move on, so once the repairs are done how do you feel about expanding Avery Alterations to include their old premises?’
‘What a great idea!’ She paused, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘Is this the part where I smother you with gratitude?’
Jonas shrugged. ‘It’s not mandatory. You can have the premises—at a slightly higher rent than before, naturally— with no strings attached.’
His eyes held hers for a long, charged moment, and suddenly Avery felt impatient with her own hypocrisy. She had broken her own rules by inviting Jonas to dinner here, and had dressed very deliberately to entice—not only in the clinging crimson sweater but in the matching bits of lace worn underneath it. And he’d made it clear she would have to make the first move.
Before she could change her mind she leaned forward until her lips rested on his. Jonas tensed for an instant, then caught her in his arms, kissing her with a controlled, banked-down heat she could actually feel rising up inside him, like mercury in a thermometer. Her body flushed with answering warmth as his hands slid under her sweater, and she kissed him back with such fervour that she felt his shoulder muscles knot under her hands, warning her that any minute now Jonas would want to take her to bed.
Their Scandalous Affair Page 5