by Annie Seaton
“Well, you needn’t worry about me because I’ve never heard of you.” Megan still hadn’t forgotten the assumptions he’d made last night. She kept her voice cold as she fought the warmth rushing through her body. David still held her arm firmly, and the heat radiated from his fingers and ended up low in her belly.
“That’s good.” He ran his other hand through his loose curls. “Look, all I want is privacy. This time of the year with the festival brings all types of people into town. We’ve had a few journalists in the village trying to dig up some dirt on us. Anything to sell a magazine or newspaper.” He looked away and seemed to be talking to himself. “They never seem to let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
“I know what you mean.” But despite feeling a measure of sympathy, she looked pointedly down at his hand. He didn’t take the hint and Megan fought the desire to lean into his chest. His words had resonated with her and she clenched her fists. He was so close to her, his woodsy cologne enveloped her and she stepped back, catching her breath.
“Look, I can probably help you and be a bit neighbourly. I have to go into Taunton tomorrow morning, so if you want to come with me, the offer is there. There’s are a few cafés and a library with Wi-Fi. There’s nothing in the village. We’re a bit behind the times here.”
For a moment, Megan considered refusing his offer and then realised she couldn’t afford to. She had to see what was happening back in Sydney. How Tony was progressing with the appeal. And also checking that Kathy was okay.
And whether I’ll have a job to go back to. She could buy a power adapter while they were there, and then she could charge her cell phone and her laptop and not have to depend on him being neighbourly. She sensed he was already regretting the offer to help her out. David Morgan was a strange man.
“Thank you. That’s very kind.”
“Be ready at eight. I’m only going in for an hour or so. I have to be back for rehearsal. With all the problems we’ve had, we’re way behind.”
He turned on his heel and headed back to his band members, but not before Megan noticed how well his jeans fit to a set of powerful thighs.
She reached up and brushed her fingers across the top of her arm where he had gently gripped her.
Get over it. That’s the last thing I need. A holiday fling.
Just use him as an opportunity to find out more about Davy Morgan. What an opportunity had landed in her lap. Meeting the nephew of the man she’d been obsessed with since her teens.
What were the chances of that? She’d be crazy to let it go.
A smile tugged at her lips. As crazy as the woman in the grocery store.
If nothing else, her first twenty-four hours in England had been far from boring.
Chapter Eight
Vivid dreams plagued Megan’s sleep and she sat up in bed, her breath coming in short gasps. It was pitch dark and she was wide-awake. Images of bare-chested sweaty rock stars with black curly hair, on stage in tight leather pants and belting out loud music, had woken her and she’d lain there with her eyes open for a moment before she sat up, and then she realised that real music was actually pounding through the darkness from the house next door.
She’d thumped her pillow and put her head beneath the blankets but now her mind turned to worry about the appeal. Being out of contact was absolutely frustrating and she lay there wondering whether she should go home a bit earlier than she’d originally planned. Was there even any point continuing her research? Control of her life seemed to be slipping through her fingers.
Chances were there’d be no job to go back to, anyway. Maybe she could spend the rest of her life in this pretty cottage. Not such a bad alternative.
The music drifted in from next door and Megan closed her eyes as Davy Morgan’s voice came across to her in the still of the night. She closed her eyes and let the music wash over her. Tears rolled down her cheeks. It was one of his sad love songs that she’d always loved.
“I’ll love you wherever you are, whenever you are.”
The ability of music to change moods and to promote well-being in its listeners had fascinated her since she’d first listened to those Davy Morgan songs in her teens, and that had been the catalyst for her study of music. Now it was flowing through her like a drug and she embraced the high. She had to put the fiasco at home out of her mind and make the most of being here at Glastonbury. The opportunity to enrich her sociology of music thesis was something she needed to embrace. Her throat closed as the music swelled to a crescendo and she drew a deep breath as euphoria flooded through her.
No matter what was happening at home, and what went down with her job at the university, she was here because of her love for the music and the innate desire to find out more about the seventies and the festivals. If it didn’t end up contributing to her doctorate, did it really matter? The knowledge and the music filled an empty place within her soul.
Music had the ability to take over her soul and fill her with love. It completed her, and made everything seem worthwhile.
Suddenly, the music stopped before reaching the final riff, and she felt cheated. But when it went back to the beginning and started again, Megan smiled.
Just the same as she’d played that song over and over when she was a teenager.
She lay back and waited for it to get to the end again, but it chopped off before the final rise. By the time he had played the song and stopped it eight or more times, frustration filled her.
No wonder David Morgan didn’t want neighbours if he was going to play his uncle’s music at full volume. The song stopped and started jerkily; sometimes halfway through lines, before going back to the beginning of the song. It went on for an hour or more. After another ten stops and starts, Megan put the pillow over her head and burrowed into the soft mattress.
Why the hell was he playing it like that?
She couldn’t stand it. He was ruining the music she loved.
##
The next thing Megan knew there was pounding on the door downstairs and she opened her eyes to bright sunshine.
She’d overslept. Jumping out of bed, she grabbed a loose T-shirt and threw it on and pulled it down over her legs before running down the stairs and opening the door. She peered through the narrow opening as her fingers clutched the door.
David was leaning against the post on the small porch.
“So I was just checking. You’ve changed your mind about coming to Taunton?” He didn’t smile and she got the impression he was hoping she’d agree with his assumption.
“No, I slept in.” She glared at him. “You playing your uncle’s music at full volume kept me awake most of the night.”
That got a strange look out of him, before he glanced at his watch. “So how long till you can be ready?”
“Five minutes. I’ve still got no water for a shower, so I’ll just get dressed. I can grab a coffee in…where are we going?”
“Taunton.”
The water delivery promised by the crazy purple-clad lady in the village store hadn’t arrived, so Megan made do with a quick wash with a flick of water out of the last of her drinking water. She was in dire need of a shower and a hair wash after the long flight and twenty-four hours in the cottage. She pulled her hair up and wound it into a knot on the back of her head before slipping on a clean pair of jeans and a loose cotton shirt. A good spray of perfume and she flew down the stairs. At least clean clothes made her feel a bit more respectable.
“Are you sure you don’t know any plumbers?”
David shook his head as he opened the door of an old sporty vehicle of some type. It looked like one of those cars in the Austin Powers movies she loved. It was a bright-red convertible and the top was down.
“Never needed one in my cottage. Sorry,” he said.
“Wow, I feel like I’m back in the sixties,” she exclaimed. “What is this?”
“1966 Austin Healey 3000.”
“Is this like the one out of that Austin Powers movie?”
<
br /> “No that was an E-Type Jaguar…the Shaguar…remember?” He looked across and for the first time a glimmer of a smile crossed his face. “You probably think that’s more suitable for a rock star?”
“Are you a rock star, David?” She looked at him curiously. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve never heard of you. What’s your band called?”
The resemblance to his uncle was amazing. Every time she glanced across at him, she wanted to giggle like a silly teenager. It would be interesting to hear him perform at the festival. From what he had been playing last night, it seemed like he did covers of his uncle’s songs.
As soon as they got back from town she was going to walk across the fields and listen to the rehearsal. She’d made sure she’d gotten a ticket that gave her access to the farm before the festival kicked off. No matter what the crazy hippie shopkeeper had said about magnetics and ley lines. Megan shook her head; she felt like she’d stumbled into an alternative world. It would be a great opportunity to interview singers and roadies before the festival proper began.
David put the car into gear and roared up the narrow road without answering her question about his band. Megan grabbed for her hair as the wind caught it and it flew around her face.
“So do you want me to find you a plumber?” he asked, changing the subject.
“If you could, that would be great.”
“First off, I’ll come over and have a look when we get back.” His brow furrowed. “Look, I don’t want to rush you but we can only stay an hour or so in Taunton. I’ll drop you off at a café and you can get your caffeine hit and check your e-mail at the same time.”
“That’ll be long enough. I just need to see what’s happening at home.” She let out her breath in a sigh and he looked across at her.
“Problems?” he said.
“A problem at work. If it’s not sorted, I’ll have no job to go back to.”
“What do you do?”
He actually sounded interested so she gave him the short version of her career. He didn’t need to know all the details. “I do some lecturing and tutoring in the sociology of music while I’m working on my PhD. It was actually your Uncle Davy who fostered my love of seventies music.”
He glanced across at her as he changed a gear and the car took off down a narrow hill. “Hmm. Interesting.”
All was quiet until they drove into a medium-sized town and David dropped her off on the main street.
“There’s a café that should have computers about halfway along. I’ll pick you up here in an hour. Okay?” he asked.
“What about an electrical store? I need an adapter.”
He pointed one out across from the café. Megan grabbed her bag and climbed out of the car, taking note of the cafe name so she didn’t get lost.
***
It only took five minutes for David to meet with the bank manager and sign the transfer for it to be couriered back to Clive at his bank in London. The royalties from his music were still providing him with a luxurious lifestyle in the twenty-first century and enabled him to split his time between Glastonbury and his island in the Bahamas.
He wandered along the main street, which was lined with a mixture of old buildings from previous centuries and modern glass-and-concrete structures. Glancing at his watch, he turned into the courtyard of the Castle Hotel, where he knew he could get a quick coffee in the BRAZZ brasserie beneath the imposing four-story structure.
He loved the old castle, and he’d stayed there a few times before he’d bought the cottage. An ancient wisteria vine with a trunk as thick as a tree rose from the walls beside the entrance and covered them with soft purple blooms. Once a Norman fortress and reconstructed in the eighteenth century, the Castle at Taunton had been welcoming travellers since the twelfth century and David idly wondered how hard it would be to find a time gate to go back and see it in its heyday.
Too risky. Alice had constantly warned him about using the ley line gates just to satisfy his curiosity about the past.
He shook his head as he sipped his coffee and pondered the problem of Megan. He’d finally found out her name before they’d started the short trip to Taunton. He’d tried to avoid her at the pub yesterday, but Bear had pushed him on. Life was complicated enough without having her next door and seeing him head for the stones every day. When she arrived at this year’s festival and he and the band weren’t playing, she was going to be asking some difficult questions.
He’d have to spin her some story about their act being canned from the current lineup to explain their nonappearance this year. But more importantly, he’d have to keep Megan away from the stones.
He could still smell her perfume from being in the car with her, despite the top being down. She must have plastered it on but he’d been relieved when her hair had been pulled back and she’d looked less like the woman he’d been dreaming about for the past two nights.
Bloody hell, I don’t need this complication.
Pushing back his chair, he stood and gestured to the bar attendant, pointing to the money he’d left on the table. The pretty girl gave him a wave and held his eye, but he had no reaction to her come-hither look. His head was full of the black-haired beauty from next door. His dreams about her had left him curiously content, but restless, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was going to have to do something about it. There was an inevitability about it that he was trying to deny.
Megan was waiting for him at the intersection as he’d asked. She’d wound her hair up and secured it with some sort of clip.
“Thanks for being on time,” he said as she slipped in and closed the door. Huge sunglasses covered her eyes and her lips were tight. He risked a quick glance across at her and frowned as she brushed the back of her hand across her cheek.
“You okay?” Not that he really needed to know, but sympathy settled in his gut as she drew a shaky breath and then tried to disguise it with a cough.
“Fine.” She didn’t speak again as they travelled through the outskirts of the small town. A couple of times, she brushed her hand to her eyes but said nothing.
David shrugged and focused on his driving. The small sports car ate up the miles quickly and it was less than half an hour when he turned onto the narrow unpaved lane that led down to the two cottages. As soon as he stopped the car outside her place, Megan opened the door and grabbed her bag.
“Thanks for the lift. Appreciate it.” She flicked him a quick wave as she shut the door and headed off down the path towards the front door of Violet Cottage. David put the car into gear and drove the short distance to the small barn on the other side of Rose Cottage.
***
Megan pulled the clip from her hair and ran her fingers through her loose curls before wandering through the kitchen. Casually picking up an apple from the shopping bag she’d left on the counter yesterday, and grateful for the large coffee she’d had in town, she stepped out the back door. She was still gob smacked by the e-mail from Tony. Her chest closed and she fought the rising panic as she slipped through the back door.
Documentary evidence of e-mails and finances supplied by VC was in the subject line of the email. Tony’s e-mail had been brief.
Attached. Megan WTF is going on?
He’d attached an audit and she’d managed to print that, and the e-mail, fold them and shove them into her pocket. The late-morning sun was still bathing the patio in sunshine and she slid onto a chair and put her head down on her crossed arms as weariness overwhelmed her. The same lethargy she’d experienced when her parents had been killed overtook her limbs and Megan blinked as her vision blurred.
Jet lag and interrupted sleep last night. That’s all it was.
She was not going to let herself sink into a depression just because some lowlife at the university had accessed her computer files. That had to be what had happened. There was no other explanation. She got a sense from the tone of Tony’s e-mail that he was beginning to doubt her innocence too. Her own brother-in-law was sceptical, s
o what chance did she have of proving she hadn’t done any of the things she’d been accused of? Looked more and more likely that someone had gone to great lengths to get her out of the department. Out of her job, and out of the university.
It had to be Greg; she had underestimated him and she hadn’t given him credit for his determination to get her out of her job.
He was a nut case; it hadn’t taken her long to figure that out. She’d seen the crazy side of him and had broken off their short relationship when she’d overheard him in a call to an ex-girlfriend one night. He was abusive and cruel, and she’d not been out with him again.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to remember if Greg had ever had access to her password. They’d gone out for a few months and he’d suckered her right in. All he’d been after was the full time lecturer’s position, and any information that she had on the selection panel. He’d trampled all over her in the race for a promotion. And he’d worked hard to get in her bed, wining her and dining her, and taking her away for romantic weekends. She’d fallen for it hook, line and sinker, needing the comfort and attention in the months after the accident.
She had sworn off men for life when she’d realised what he was doing. He’d actually had the temerity to brag to his ex about it when he’d thought Megan wasn’t listening. She’d told him to leave her apartment and demanded the key back from him. Now, she realised, he’d obviously been in her files in her home office.
She’d never given him her password but he’d obviously figured it out somehow. She’d make him pay, if it was the last thing she did.
But no more of this mooning around. She’d go to the festival rehearsal, get some more food from the crazy lady at the village store, and chase up a plumber. And then when she got home, she’d figure out a plan of attack. She was going to fight to keep her job.
Sitting up straight, she squinted into the bright sunlight as the creak of a gate caught her attention. David was heading out the back of his cottage across the fields, his guitar slung over his shoulder, and he was obviously going to rehearse at the festival at Pilton. If she didn’t hurry, she’d miss the afternoon rehearsals. No more sitting around feeling sorry for herself. She’d grab her notebook and camera, go start her research, and enjoy herself while she was there too.