[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
handed them to her. Sudden suspicion made her get up and hobble
through to the back of the house, to where the pick-up should have
been parked but wasn't. 'Of all the nerve!' Laurie exploded.
She had an unexpected visitor later that evening William. She
didn't usually see him on a Sunday and he appeared to be in a bad
mood. She speedily discovered the cause.
'Laurie!' He plunged to the attack without, she thought, wryly, even
enquiring why she was sitting with a bandaged ankle raised up before
her. 'Laurie, what are you playing at?* She didn't know what he was
talking about and her astonished brows seemed to infuriate him
further. 'Don't try and look all innocent. No wonder you wouldn't
give me a straight answer the other night. You've been two-timing
me!'
'I haven't!' she exclaimed immediately. 'Whatever gave you that
idea?'
'What my parents saw, this evening, up at Holmoak in the Stag.'
'Oh!' Laurie remembered the sea of interested faces but she'd been in
too much pain, too confused to pick out individuals.
'You see! You can't deny it now! They saw you!'
'What they saw,' Laurie retorted, 'was me being helped in by one of
my aunt's guests. I'd had a fall and...'
'And he just happened to be around to do his Sir Galahad act?'
'Yes.'
'How convenient!'
'It was,' Laurie flared up, 'or I might have been lying there still,
helpless.' For the moment it had quite escaped her that but for Curtis
Fenton, she might never have fallen in the first place. 'And if you
thought as much of me as you say you do, you wouldn't jump to
conclusions and you can tell your parents that, too!'
Whether it was her fiery indignation, or his own need to believe in
her that convinced William, Laurie could not tell, bat he began to
cool down and finally apologised for his doubt of her. But the
incident left Laurie with a niggling little doubt about William
himself.
She taxed Curtis next morning with his presumption in taking the
pick-up.
'I wouldn't have minded, if you'd only asked.'
But he was blithely unrepentant. '
'It seemed a sensible idea as I'll be working for you. Now I can drive
you up to Holmoak and ...'
' You won't be going up there,' Laurie interrupted his self-
congratulation.
'Not reneging on the deal are you?'
'Deal. What deal? There wasn't one. You put me in a position where I
had to offer you a job, And it's not as if you really need it with all
your money ...'
'I told you why I needed a job. I...' He stopped struck suddenly by
what she'd said. 'All my money?' Suspiciously, 'What gave you that
idea?'
'When I found out that you're an author, a best-selling one. And you
had the nerve to tell my aunt you were out of work.'
'No!' he corrected her, hand raised. 'I said I was in no particular line
at the moment and I'm not. I'm between books.'
'Then why couldn't you have just said that instead of letting her think
... Making her feel sorry for you.
Conning me into ..
'I didn't want to tell Mrs Fletcher who I am, for the simple reason that
I didn't want to be lionised. I ...'
'Such conceit!' Laurie said scornfully. 'What makes you think she'd
be so impressed? That anyone here would be impressed?' She meant
herself, of course.
'Conceit?' he queried. 'Surely if I were conceited I would have
wanted my presence broadcast as,' drily, 'it certainly would have been
had I told your aunt.' He was implying, of course, that Sue Fletcher
was an incorrigible gossip and, while Laurie could not deny it, his
words did not favour his cause in her eyes. 'You still haven't told me
if the job is mine or not?' he reminded her.
'I don't go back on my word once it's given,' Laurie told him stiffly.
'When I said you wouldn't be going up to Holmoak, I meant that the
man you're replacing was working on the new development.'
She thought George gave her a curious look when she introduced
Curtis and explained his presence on site, but the elderly foreman
was too courteous to make any comment in front of the stranger. On
the way up to the cottage, however, he expressed his curiosity.
'He's a likely lookin' lad. I suppose he wouldn't be the reason ye
decided not to take on a replacement for Jonty?'
'Certainly not!' Laurie was indignant at being accused of anything so
unbusinesslike. But because George's guess was not far short of the
mark she recalled her reasons for not wanting the vacancy
advertised at the Job Centre her tone was not very convincing, and
she knew George was puzzled.
'I reckon yell be needin' a foursome of carpenters up here,' George
had said gloomily after their previous visit to the old farmhouse, 'and
I'm loath, mind, to spare more than one from the other site.'
That carpenter was already at work when they arrived and he
repeated George's pessimistic forecast.
'Ill be able to do a lot myself,' Laurie reminded them.
'Not until that ankle's right ye won't, pet!' George said firmly. He was
perhaps the only person who would have dared to make a remark like
that, or from whom she would have accepted it. It was several days
before her ankle was sound enough to take her fuU weight and the
inactivity irked her. A visit to the doctor had confirmed Curtis
Fenton's diagnosis and irrationally this annoyed Laurie, making her
even more irritable.
'Pity yon good-lookin' fellow of yours didn't say sooner that he was
dab hand at the carpentry,' George told Laurie about a week after
she'd returned to work.
'He's not my fellow,' she retorted, 'and for goodness' sake don't say
anything like that in William Herriott's hearing.'
George had just driven Curtis up to Cockshaw Farm and set him to
work on the replacement door-frames, much to Laurie's dismay.
Every time she saw Curtis Fenton it was as though it were for the
first time, the height of him striking her with fresh shock. Since that
Sunday up on the hillside she'd been annoyed with herself to find him
so constantly on her mind, especially since it was very unlikely that
kiss had meant anything to a hard-boiled journalist who could make
new women- friends wherever he went. Besides, since William's
proposal and his stormy visit, she'd realised that what threatened to
become almost an obsession with the attractive stranger was
disloyalty to William.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]