bowls. For a moment she saw itwith another's eyes, the eyes of someone not used to opulencegarnished with lilac and lilies and gerberas, and she understoodwhy he was so impressed.
'This is a very lovely home you have.'
'Thank you,' she said in rather a small voice.
'May I sit down, Miss Nash? And I have a second request.
“May I call you Nerissa?'
She didn't know how to say no to either. To refuse seemedc hurlish and somehow setting herself up as superior, and ever since she began to be known and sought after she had resolved never to think herself better than anyone else and certainly not to show it. Helplessly, she watched him settle himself on one of the sofas, open the orange cardboard folder he was carrying,and look up to give her a hugely wide and toothy grin.
Mix had had plenty of practice, if not quite at this sort of thing, at least in selling himself and his various products, being pleasant and mildly flirtatious with women. Any diffidence he might have had in other circumstances faded when he was talking to a woman and putting across a point. Besides, the vodkahad begun to do its work before he rang the MP's bell.
He no longer saw any reason to beat about the bush and he said, 'I'm going to come out with the truth frankly, Nerissa,and tell you I'm not here to talk about politics or elections or boring stuff like that. I don't know much about it anyway asyour smartass neighbor was kind enough to tell me to my face.No, I'm here to see you because what I said when we met in old Chawcer's house was all true, every single word of it. And I'd like to tell you again, choose my words a bit more carefully this time, but do you think you could rustle us up a coffee first, my love?'
Whether it was that 'my love' that did it or his calling her great-aunt's friend 'old Chawcer' or just his tone and look, she couldn't have said, but as for the coffee, she was glad of a chance to get out of the room and to her mobile. Not that she was going to call Darel jones, much as she would have loved tosee him. But she knew she couldn't summon him. It would be unfair on him to fetch him away from work and a nasty underhandtrick to play on this awful man. All these weeks she had been longing for the chance to call him, even thinking of encouraging this man in order to have an excuse, but now shecouldn't do it. It was her father she was going to phone. She put the coffee and the boiling water in the cafetiere first. Then she dialed her dad at his office and when he answered, just said,
'Dad, he's here, in the house, that stalker I told you about.'
'Right,' he said. 'I'll handle it.'
Nerissa's agent and, come to that, her mother and father and her brothers and Rodney Devereux, would all have said if asked that Nerissa must be quite accustomed to dealing with men making unwelcome overtures to her, but in fact very few had done so. There was something about her, something icemaidenish yet warm and innocent, that put off any man even marginally more sensitive than Mix Cellini. Those whose approaches were welcome had been few and all of them knew where they stood before the initial overture was made. Mix, onthe other hand, was unable to tell the difference between a woman who agreed to give him coffee and a seat because she loathed the idea of being rude and one who did so becauseshe shortly hoped to be in bed with him. He took the cup shehanded him with a slight smile and a sexy look and said, 'Come and sit here by me.'
'I'll stay here if you don't mind.'
'Well, I do mind, I mind a lot.' Mix distorted his face into an ingratiating smile. 'But we'll let it pass for the time being.
Now tell me, where did you get your lovely name, Nerissa? It really is a most beautiful name and, do you know, I don't think I've ever come across it before.'
'My mum got it out of a Shakespeare pray.'
'Really? I see you come from educated people. I reckon these mixed partnerships are best, don't you? Mixed- up genes and all that. My grandad was Italian. I don't mind telling you, though I don't tell everyone, he was an Italian prisoner of war. Romantic, eh?'
She said helplessly, 'I don't know.'
'Maybe I'd best get down to the nitty-gritty. This is very good coffee, by the way.Very good. What I'm starting to say is,me and you, I guess we've a lot in common, same sort of background, same sort of age, both fitness freaks and both living in good old West Eleven. I don't mind telling you I've been in love with you for yonks and I flatter myself you don't exactly dislike me. So what say we put it to the test?'
She was on her feet now, seriously frightened and more so when he too got up. They stood no more than a yard apart and he took a step toward her.
'How about a little kiss for starters?'
She was preparing to fight him off, use her boot heels as weapons if necessary, but as she backed away the doorbell rang. It disconcerted him. He looked, not bewildered or disappointed, but furiously angry, a pinpoint of red light in each eye, his upper lip curling back.
'Excuse me,' she said, knowing these words were ridiculous in the circumstances. She almost ran to the door to let her father in.
It wasn't her father. It was Darel Jones.
Chapter 27
'Your father called me.'
I'll kill Dad, was her first thought, and then love for her father overwhelmed her. 'He shouldn't have,' she said.
'That chap-has he gone?'
'He's still here. He's in there.'
Darel walked into the room where Mix, still on his feet, was examining a glass figurine very like the one he had been forced to use on Danila. Something else they had in common…
'Get out,' said Darel.
'Pardon me? I don't think we've met. Mix Cellini. I'm a friend of Miss Nash. In point of fact, we were just arranging how we were going to spend the evening till we were so rudely interrupted. '
'I said get out. Go. Unless you want me to put you out.'
'For Christ's sake!' Mix was mystified. 'What have I done, I'd like to know? Ask her if you don't believe me.'
'I really would like you to go,' Nerissa said. 'Please don't fight over it. Just go.'
'Because you ask me, I will,' said Mix. 'I know you don't mean it. You know and I know that I'll be back once your bullyboy is out of the way.' He tried to move with dignity toward the door. But he was learning that though it is possible for a man with a protruding belly to be many things, dignified is not one of them. He turned in the door. 'I'll never let youg o,' he said, more because it was the right thing to say than because he meant it. He opened the front door and closed it behind him.
'Thank you for that,' Nerissa said in a weak voice. 'Do you think he meant it, that he'd never let me go?'
'No. He probably thinks I live here, that I'm your significant other or partner or whatever.'
She wanted to say, I wish you were, and, will you be? But she could only look at him, at his beautifully chiseled Celtic face, the black hair, the pale skin with the faintest red bloom on the cheeks, at his lean, long-fingered hands, at the lengthof him.
'I've got something to say to you, Nerissa. I've been hoping for a chance to say it for weeks now.'
Impossible to resist a rejoinder to that. 'You could have called me.'
'I know. I wanted to think carefully about what I knew and what I wanted. I needed to be sure I'd be doing the right thing.
I'm sure now.'
'Sure of what?'
He smiled. 'Come here. Sit beside me.'
Mix's invitation she had unhesitatingly refused but now the same request, uttered from the same place on the sofa, had come from Darel, she accepted it. He turned to face her andtook both her hands in his. 'When we came to live next door Iwas a big teenager and you were a small one. I thought youbeautiful even then-who wouldn't?-but
