CHAPTER FOUR
ANNIE hadn’t been aware of holding her breath, but the minute the back door closed she covered her hot cheeks with her hands and let out something very close to a, ‘Whew.’
That had been intense.
She appeared to have got away with it, though. For now, at any rate. And she hadn’t told any outright lies, just left George to answer his own questions. A bit of a grey area, no doubt, but she was sure he’d rather not know the truth and twenty-four hours from now she’d be miles away from Maybridge with no harm done.
The cat leapt from the chair as she crossed to the fridge, chirruping hopefully as it nuzzled its head against her ankle.
‘Hello, puss. Are you hungry too?’
She poured a little milk into a bowl, then sat back on her heels, watching the cat lap it up.
‘Trouble,’ she said, grinning in spite of everything that had happened. ‘He said I was trouble. Do you know, puss, that’s the very first time anyone has ever looked at me and thought “trouble”.’ The cat looked up, milk clinging to its muzzle, and responded with a purr. ‘I know,’ Annie said. ‘It is immensely cheering. Almost worth wrecking Lydia’s car for.’ Then, since the cat made a very good listener, ‘Tell me, would you describe George Saxon as a likely beach bum?’
The cat, stretching out its tongue to lick the last drop from its whiskers, appeared to shake its head.
‘No, I didn’t think so, either.’
Surely ‘laid-back’ was the very definition of beach-bum-hood, while George Saxon was, without doubt, the most intense man she’d ever met.
With Xandra on his case, she suspected, he had quite a lot to be intense about, although if he really was an absentee father he undoubtedly deserved it. And what was all that about closing down the garage? How could he do that while his own father was in hospital? It was utterly appalling-and a private family matter that was absolutely none of her business, she reminded herself.
She just wanted to get the car fixed and get back on the road. Take in the sights, go shopping unrecognised. But, despite Xandra’s build-up and her assurance that she wouldn’t miss it, she’d be giving the Maybridge Christmas market a wide berth.
Less ho, ho, ho…More no, no, no…
The thought made her feel oddly guilty. As if she’d somehow let the girl down. Which was stupid. If it hadn’t been for Xandra, she would have been picked up by some other mechanic who wouldn’t have given her nearly as much grief.
A man without the careless arrogance that was guaranteed to rouse any woman with an ounce of spirit to a reckless response. One who wouldn’t have held her in a way that made her feel like a woman instead of a piece of porcelain.
Someone polite, who would not have made uncomplimentary comments about her driving, but would have promised to deliver her car in full working order the next day because that was on the customer relations script he’d learned on his first day on the job.
In other words, all the things that she wanted to get away from.
Whatever else George was, he certainly didn’t follow a script. And locking horns with a man who didn’t know he was supposed to show due deference to the nation’s sweetheart was a lot more interesting than being holed up in a budget hotel room with only the television remote for company.
For all his faults, George Saxon did have one thing in his favour-he was the complete opposite of Rupert Devenish, a man who had never rated a single ‘whew’. Not from her, anyway.
There was nothing textbook about George.
Okay, so he was tall, with shoulders wide enough to fill a doorway-no doubt like the lines carved into his cheeks, around those penetrating grey eyes, they came from hard use.
And he was dark.
But he wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, classically handsome. On the contrary, his face had a lived-in quality and there was enough stubble on his chin to suggest a certain laissez-faire attitude to his appearance. He certainly wasn’t a man to wait for some woman to pluck him off the ‘ideal husband’ shelf, she thought. More the kind who, when he saw what he wanted, would act like a caveman.
The thought, which was supposed to make her smile, instead prompted the proverbial ripple down her spine. Something which, until today, she’d foolishly imagined to be no more than a figure of speech.
He was, by any standard, anything but ideal and she had the strongest feeling that her wisest course of action would be to make his day and get out of there, fast.
But, then again, why would she when, for the purposes of this adventure, he could almost have been made to order.
Exciting, annoying, disturbing.
She’d wanted to be disturbed, jolted out of her rut. Wanted to be excited and, maybe, just a little bit reckless.
She swallowed as she considered what being reckless with George Saxon would entail.
He was right. She should definitely leave. As soon as possible. Not because the idea appalled her. On the contrary, it was much too excitingly disturbing, recklessly appealing and she’d call a taxi to take her to the motel.
Just as soon as she’d cooked the hot meal she’d promised them.
Her stomach rumbled at the thought. Lunch had been a very long time ago and she’d been too nervous to eat more than a mouthful of that. Not that she’d eaten much of anything lately, a fact that had been picked up by one of the gossip magazines looking for a new angle. An eating disorder was always good copy.
Now, for the first time in months, she felt genuinely hungry and, leaving the cat to its ablutions, she stood up and returned her attention to the fridge.
It was well stocked with the basics, but it wasn’t just the bacon, eggs, cheese and vegetables that were making her hungry. She’d already seen the large homemade meat pie sitting on the middle shelf, gravy oozing gently from the slit in the centre, just waiting to be slipped into the oven.
Presumably it had been made by George’s mother before she’d left to visit her husband in the hospital. That Xandra knew it was there was obvious from her earlier performance but, anxious to keep her grandfather’s garage functioning, desperate, maybe, to prove herself to her father, she was prepared to take any chance that came her way and she’d grabbed her offer to make dinner for them all with both hands.
Good for her, she thought. If you had a dream you shouldn’t let anyone talk you out of it, or stand in your way. You should go for it with all your heart.
Annie put the pie in the oven, then set about the task of peeling potatoes and carrots. It took her a minute or two to get the hang of the peeler, then, as she bent to her task, the annoying glasses slid down her nose and fell into the sink.
She picked them out of the peelings and left them on the draining board while she finished.
Her only problem then was the vexed question of how long it took potatoes to boil. She’d left her handbag in the car, but she’d put her cellphone in her coat pocket after calling for help. She wiped her hands and dug it out to see what she could find on the Web.
The minute she switched it on she got the ‘message waiting’ icon.
There was a text from Lydia with just a single code word to reassure her that everything had gone exactly according to plan, that she’d reached the airport without problem-or, as she’d put it, being twigged as a ‘ringer’.
Even if they hadn’t agreed that contact between them should be on an emergency-only basis-you never knew who was tuned into a cellphone frequency-she’d still be in the air so she couldn’t call her and tell her everything that had happened, confess to having cut her hair, wrecking her car. Instead, she keyed in the agreed response, confirmation that she, too, was okay, and hit ‘send’.
There was, inevitably, a voicemail from her grandfather asking her to call and let him know when she’d touched
