Perhaps that in itself wasn’t remarkable.
What was remarkable was that she had known it was there even before she’d looked.
A little shiver ran down her spine.
But she was making too much of it, she told herself sturdily. That kind of ornamentation was no doubt quite common. She could almost have expected it.
Realizing that Michael was waiting for her, she pulled herself together and prepared to move on.
He opened a communicating door, and ushered her through. ‘At one time this was the dining-room, but it was so little used that I decided to make it into an office.’
It was clear that she had been mistaken in presuming he just rented the house. To be able to make that kind of major alteration, he must surely own it.
The office was sparsely furnished and businesslike, its windows fitted with slatted blinds. There was a smoke-grey carpet, a large desk on which sat a computer and a printer, a black leather swivel chair, a bookcase full of what appeared to be reference books, and a filing cabinet.
With no ornaments or pictures, it was clearly intended as a place to work without any distractions.
Leaving by a door on the far side, they crossed the hall and went through into a large living-kitchen, with comfortable-looking rustic furniture and a big, wood-burning range.
‘As you can see, it’s been brought up to date fairly recently,’ Michael remarked.
Looking at all the mod cons, which included a microwave and a dishwasher, Jenny asked, ‘And there’s no problem with the power?’
‘So long as everything isn’t switched on at the same time, the generator, which is housed through here—’ he let her peep into what had once been a stable block and was now garages ‘—manages to cope.
‘Next door to the kitchen is the cold larder, which has been left more or less as it was…’
If the kitchen hadn’t disturbed her serenity, the larder did. There were the shelves and cupboards, the green marble slab at the far end, and the deep porcelain sink with its old-fashioned water pump, just as she had visualized it.
‘And it fits your description perfectly,’ he went on softly, ‘even to the pump.’ Then, like a cobra striking, ‘Do you think it works?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said with certainty.
‘You’re quite right. But how did you know?’
Thrown, she stammered, ‘Well, I—I didn’t really.’
But when he’d asked the question, she had pictured clear water gushing from the spout when the handle was pumped up and down.
Until then she had been trying to treat the whole thing lightly, as though it was some game. Now the strangeness of it threw her, making her feel nervous, unsure, as though she were stranded on thin ice that might give way at any moment and plunge her into dark and unknown depths.
His eyes on her face, he queried, ‘And you’re sure you’ve never been here before?’
‘Positive.’
She looked and sounded genuinely shaken, and for a moment he was almost tempted to believe her. But only for a moment, then common sense returned, making him wonder what kind of game she was playing.
After his divorce, some women had gone to great and diverse lengths to capture his interest, but none as intriguing or as well planned as this.
But how could she have planned it?
To have come up with such an accurate description of the house, she must have been here before, seen photographs of the place, or been told all about it. And she hadn’t known where he was taking her until the very last minute.
Perhaps Paul had mentioned that he did his writing at Slinterwood, and given her detailed information about the place?
Knowing Paul, that didn’t seem very likely, but it was the only logical explanation he could come up with. Unless she was clairvoyant.
‘Perhaps you have second sight?’ he suggested, half in earnest.
A little flustered by the concept, she assured him, ‘No, not that I know of. But if I believed in reincarnation, I might think I’d lived here in some previous life.’
‘And do you? Believe in reincarnation, I mean?’
‘No.’
‘So how do you account for it?’
She couldn’t.
But still she tried. ‘When I’ve had the chance I’ve always enjoyed visiting National Trust properties and stately homes…All I can think is, I must have seen, and half remembered, another house enough like Slinterwood to superimpose the two.’
It sounded weak even in her own ears, and a little defensively she said, ‘I’m afraid it’s the only explanation I can come up with.’
‘There could be another one,’ he mentioned, his voice even.
When she looked at him uncomprehendingly, he went on, ‘Paul knows Slinterwood quite well—perhaps he told you all about it?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
Then, catching the fleeting expression of doubt that crossed his face, she added sturdily, ‘You can ask him if you don’t believe me. I’d never even heard of Slinterwood until you mentioned it earlier today.’
There was an unmistakable ring of truth in the words that brought him up short, and he found himself saying quietly, ‘I do believe you.’
She relaxed a little as they moved on and came to a halt outside the final door.
‘What you thought might be a morning room is actually the housekeeper’s room. Or should I say it used to be, when there was a housekeeper.’
‘But I thought…You mentioned a Mrs Blair. Isn’t she the housekeeper?’
‘Mrs Blair is the wife of one of the estate workers, and lives in the hamlet just down the coast. She cleans and airs the place when I’m in London and gets everything ready for when I’m coming down, while her son does the heavy work and takes care of the generator.
‘But once I’m here I prefer to look after myself without interruptions, so she doesn’t come in unless I ask her to.’
‘Oh…Oh, I see…’ Jenny said, all her previous doubts about the wisdom of being isolated here with him—especially now she’d discovered they were quite alone—flooding back.
He smiled a little, as if reading her thoughts, and assured her, ‘Don’t worry, even if we are here all by ourselves I’m not going to turn into an axe murderer or a dangerous psychopath.’
She flushed. ‘I didn’t think you were.’
And it was true. After her reaction to that earlier kiss, and the shared intimacy by the fire, her worries were of a different nature.
Once again reading her mind with deadly accuracy, he queried, ‘But you do have other concerns?’
‘Other concerns?’ she echoed. Then hastily, ‘No! No, certainly not.’
‘Well, in that case,’ he said blandly, ‘I’ll leave you to unpack and settle in while I make a phone call or two.’
Jenny climbed the stairs, her thoughts chaotic. Had she been wise to say she had no other concerns? After all, it could be interpreted in two ways.
Normally both her brain and her tongue were well coordinated and under control, but Michael Denver had the disturbing ability to scatter her wits and turn her into a gibbering idiot.
Thinking back to the original interview, she had foolishly stated, ‘A good PA should do whatever it takes to keep her boss happy.’
Suppose he’d taken that to mean she was willing to share his bed? If he had, and he turned up the heat, where would that leave her?
Here. Quite alone with him. And vulnerable.
It wasn’t that she was afraid he might overstep the mark. What shook her was the sudden realization that he might not need to, that it wasn’t so much him she wasn’t sure she could trust as herself.
But surely she would only have to remind herself of the past, of her humiliating failure at relationships, to enable her to keep the barriers firmly in place?
While she had waited for the right man to appear, she had been more than able to keep other males at bay with a cool reserve that had effectively frozen them off.
Then Andy
had come along.
He had seemed to be the one, and, their wedding only a few weeks away, she had given in to his pleas to sleep with him.
Until the flat they were planning to rent became vacant, Andy had been sharing a flat with a man named Simon. A small flat with paper-thin walls and very little privacy.
Knowing that Simon might walk in at any moment had put Jenny on edge, and, despite Andy’s assurance that his flatmate ‘wouldn’t give a toss’, she had been unable to relax.
Though she had tried very hard to please him, to be everything he had wanted her to be, the experience had left her feeling bitterly disappointed and woefully inadequate.
She had hoped that Andy would understand and be patient. But, showing a less than pleasant side of his nature, a side she had never seen before, he had accused her of not caring enough, of lacking warmth and passion and being next door to frigid.
That night, back in her own bed, she had cried herself to sleep.
The following morning, rallying a little, she had tried to tell herself that things would improve once they were in their own flat and married.
But her confidence, both in herself and in Andy’s professed love for her, had been badly shaken.
Then, not long afterwards, and quite by chance, she had discovered that he was two-timing her.
Their flat had finally been vacated, and she had been taking some things round when she had discovered him in what would have been their bed, with another woman, and the bottom had dropped out of her world.
She had thrown his ring at him, and, feeling used and betrayed, hurt and humiliated and bitterly angry, vowed never to trust another man.
Laura, ever practical, had said, ‘You should thank your lucky stars that you found out what the swine was really like before you married him.’
While recognizing the sense of that, it had still taken her months to get over the hurt, to claw back some of her pride and self-respect, and bury her feelings of inadequacy.
So how could she think of herself as vulnerable when it came to a man like Michael Denver? A man who, apart from one brief kiss, had really shown no interest in her as anything other than his hired PA.
Yet somehow she did.
It made no sense, but that one light kiss had moved her in a way that no other man’s kisses had.
Though that didn’t mean she had to act like a complete numbskull, she scolded herself. She’d always been very successful at masking her feelings, a trait that had helped her enormously when it came to dealing with difficulties in either her personal or professional life, and that was what she would do with Michael, at least until she got her newly awakened libido under control!
Having succeeded in convincing herself that she’d been fretting over nothing, she pushed any remaining worries to the back of her mind, and, closing the heavy curtains to shut out the darkness pressing against the panes, set about unpacking.
Putting her nightdress and dressing gown on the end of the bed, she stowed the rest of her things neatly away in the wardrobe and the chest of drawers, while she debated changing out of the suit she was wearing.
A lingering caution suggested she should stick with the businesslike image. But while she could see the sense of that, she felt the need to change into something easier, slightly less formal.
Having decided, she stripped off the suit and hung it in the wardrobe before freshening up in the pretty lilac and white bathroom.
Then, making a positive statement, she chose a simple olive-green dress that Laura had disgustedly described as ‘matronly’, and slipped it on.
Somehow she had to get through their first evening alone together with the guidelines firmly in place and her composure intact.
Hopefully he would want to begin work as soon as dinner was over—she grasped at the prospect like a lifeline—and once their attention was fixed firmly on his next book it should make things a lot easier.
When she descended the stairs and made her way to the living-room, she found it was empty. Which might possibly mean he was already in his office working.
But that too was empty, as was the library.
She finally ran him to earth in the kitchen where, his sleeves rolled up and a tea towel draped around his lean hips, he was using two wooden spoons to toss a green salad.
The oak table was already set with a fish platter, a bowl of what looked like home-made dressing, and a basket of crispy rolls. A bottle of white wine waited in a cooler.
Glancing up from his task, he said, ‘Two things. I hope you like fish?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘And I hope you don’t mind eating in the kitchen?’
‘No, not at all.’ Glancing at the glowing range, which had been set in an inglenook fireplace, she observed, ‘It’s nice and homely.’
‘I decided to keep the old range to sit in front of, and cook on if the generator fails.’
Her hair, he noted, was still in the businesslike coil and her dress, with its long sleeves, calf-length skirt and demure neckline, clearly wasn’t intended to be provocative.
It didn’t look as if she had any plans to vamp him, he thought with wry humour.
But though the dress was conservative, it was far from dull. The silky material clung lovingly to the curve of her bust and waist, and swirled becomingly around her slender legs when she moved.
Aware of his scrutiny, she asked quickly, ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
According to Claire, most women disliked having to get their own drinks, and, deciding to put her to the test, he suggested, ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind getting us both a drink?’
A loaded drinks trolley was standing to one side, and while she surveyed the various bottles he watched her.
When her inspection was over, appearing completely unfazed, she queried, ‘What would you like?’
‘A dry Martini with ice and lemon, please.’
‘Shaken not stirred, presumably?’
He grinned. ‘What else?’
Spooning crushed ice into a silver cocktail shaker, she teased, ‘Your middle name doesn’t happen to be James, by any chance?’
His face straight, so that she didn’t know whether or not to believe him, he told her, ‘As a matter of fact it does.’
With a composure that suggested she knew exactly what she was doing, she added measures of vodka and French vermouth to the ice and shook it thoroughly, before pouring the mixture into two Martini glasses and adding a twist of lemon to each.
Handing him one, she suggested, ‘Try this and see if it’s to your taste.’
‘Thanks.’
As he accepted the glass their fingers brushed and a kind of electric shock tingled up her arm.
She had read about that effect in romantic novels, but had never believed it could happen in real life. Now, as she found it could, her composure abruptly deserted her.
He made no comment, but the gleam in his eye told her he knew.
When he’d taken a sip of the cocktail, he said, ‘Spot on.’ Then, with a lopsided grin, ‘You may have just added bartender to the other things I expect my PA to do.’
She couldn’t help wondering exactly what he meant by ‘other things’, but was too chicken to ask.
There was a pair of rocking chairs in front of the range with a low table between them, and, trembling inside, her legs none too steady, she took her own glass and went to sit by the fire.
When the salad was mixed to his satisfaction, he discarded the tea towel and joined her by the fire.
Glass in hand, he leaned back comfortably, his legs crossed neatly at the ankles. ‘The meal’s ready, but if you’re in no hurry…?’
‘Well, no, I’m not…But I—’
‘Then I suggest we relax for a while and get to know one another.’
Judging by the expression on her face, Michael thought, she didn’t welcome his suggestion.
That impression was amply confirmed when she hurried on, ‘I thought you might want to eat straight away so you c
ould work later?’
‘No. I wasn’t thinking of doing any work tonight.’
‘Oh…’ she said, her lifeline gone and her heart sinking. Then rallying, ‘So what time will you want to start in the morning?’
He shook his head. ‘I won’t. After the pressures of London life, I usually take a day or two to relax and unwind while I mull over my next plot.’
‘Oh,’ she said hollowly.
If only he would get down to writing in earnest, she thought in helpless frustration. As soon as he had made a start and his book was absorbing all his attention, she would feel a great deal happier.
‘And one of the best ways to do that, I find, is to go walking.’
Well, at least he’d be out.
‘Do you like walking?’
Ambushed by the question, she answered truthfully, ‘Yes.’ Adding, ‘Before I went to live in London I used to walk for miles along the beach—’ Suddenly realizing where her answer might be leading, she broke off abruptly.
But her anxiety was put at rest when he merely said, ‘Of course, at this time of the year it depends to a great extent on the weather. Rain’s forecast, so if it happens to be heavy it might be expedient to find some other form of relaxation.’
The prospect of him ending up housebound because of the weather wasn’t one that pleased her.
His face straight but a hint of amusement in his voice, he observed, ‘You seem positively disappointed at the thought of not starting work straight away.’
She blurted out the first thing that came into her head. ‘I—I’ve never worked for a writer before and I can’t wait to see how a book comes to life, and to know I’m playing some small part in its creation.’
Then grasping at what, hopefully, would be a safe topic, she asked, ‘Do you begin by plotting out the various chapters?’
Normally he never discussed his writing with anyone, but as they were going to be working together he decided to go along with it.
‘No. I usually start with just a bare idea of the storyline. Then I concentrate on the characters, and their relationship to one other.
‘Once I have those things clear in my mind, I start to make preliminary notes.
‘If it begins to gel, I’m under way. If it doesn’t, I start all over again…’
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