‘Best not take any chances,’ he said, attempting to unravel the curious mixture of elation and dismay he felt at the prospect of her staying on for several more days.
Relief that she wasn’t going to walk away, disappear. That he’d never know what happened to her. Who she really was.
Dismay because he wanted to protect her from whatever was out there, threatening her. And that unnerved him.
‘I’m having some water,’ Xandra said, examining the contents of a glass-fronted fridge. She turned to him. ‘Do you want anything?’
To be back at his beach house with nothing on his mind more important than the design of a multi-million- pound software program, a mild flirtation with a pretty woman, he thought, as he reached for his wallet. One with curves and curls and an uncomplicated smile that let you know exactly what was on her mind.
Since that wasn’t an option, he said, ‘Coffee and-’
‘I don’t need your money,’ she snapped as he offered her a note. Then, perhaps remembering where the money in her own purse had come from, quickly said, ‘Black with too much sugar, right?’
‘Thanks.’
He’d been about to tell her to buy the angel she’d looked at, but decided against it. She wasn’t a little girl he could buy with a doll.
‘And?’ she added. He must have looked puzzled because she said, ‘You said “and”.’
‘And if you could run to a couple of those mince pies,’ he said, ‘it would fill a gap. I seem to have missed breakfast.’
‘Sugar, fat and caffeine?’ She shook her head. ‘Tut, tut, tut.’ But she turned to the woman behind the counter and said, ‘The water for me, a heart attack for George…And what’s that, Annie? Hot chocolate? Do you want a top-up?’
‘No, I’m good, thanks.’
‘Hot chocolate and a mince pie? Have a care, Annie,’ he warned her with a grin. ‘The food police will be after you too.’
‘At least I had a slice of toast before I left the house this morning.’
‘Buttered, of course. My father isn’t a man to have anything as new-fangled as low-fat spread in the house.’
‘Buttered,’ she admitted, smiling as she conceded the point. ‘But it was unsalted butter.’
‘Honestly. What are you two like?’ Xandra said disapprovingly. ‘You’re supposed to be mature adults. I’d get the “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” lecture if I ate like that.’
‘Not from me,’ he assured her.
‘Well, no. Obviously. You’d have to be there.’
‘I was,’ he reminded her. ‘Out of interest, what did you have for breakfast?’
‘Gran made us both porridge. I sliced an apple over mine and added a drizzle of maple syrup.’
‘Organic, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, good for you.’ Annie, he noticed, lips pressed together to keep a smile in check, was being very careful to avoid eye contact, this time for all the right reasons. ‘Actually,’ he continued, ‘you seem to have overlooked the fact that there’s fruit in the mincemeat.’
Xandra snorted, unimpressed, but she turned away quickly. He was hoping it was so that he wouldn’t see that, like Annie, she was trying not to laugh.
He was probably fooling himself, he thought, reaching for the paper lying on the counter to distract himself with the sports headlines on the back page so he wouldn’t dwell on how much that hurt.
‘Here you are.’ Xandra put his coffee and pastries in front of him, then, sipping from the bottle she was holding, wandered over to the window to watch for the arrival of the trees. Or possibly the young man who’d be bringing them.
‘It’ll take him a while to dig up two big trees,’ he warned her.
‘Well, I’m sorry to take up so much of your time.’ She took the paper from him, pulled out a chair and turned it over and, having glanced at the front page, opened it up. She was using it as a barrier rather than because she was interested in world news, he thought, but after a moment she looked up, stared at Annie, then looked at the paper again.
‘Has anyone ever told you how much you look like Lady Rose, Annie?’ she asked.
‘Who?’ she asked, reaching for the paper, but he beat her to it.
‘You know.’ She made a pair of those irritating quote marks with her fingers. ‘The “people’s virgin”.’
Xandra leaned over and pointed to a picture of a man and a woman. ‘Lady Rose Napier. The nation’s sweetheart. She came to Dower House a couple of years ago for prize-giving day. Chauffeur, bodyguards, the Warthog genuflecting all over the place.’
Since George paid the school fees, he received invitations to all school events as a matter of courtesy. Did his best to make all of them.
‘I must have missed that one,’ he said, realising that Lady Rose was the pampered ‘princess’ whose wedding plans were the talk of the tabloids.
He looked up from the paper to check the likeness for himself. ‘Xandra’s right,’ he said. ‘You do look like her.’ Which perhaps explained why she’d seemed vaguely familiar.
‘I wish,’ Annie said with a slightly shaky laugh. ‘I was just reading about her. She’s holed up in luxurious seclusion in a palace owned by the Ramal Hamrahn royal family. I could do with some of that.’
‘According to this, she’s with that old bloke she’s going to marry.’ Xandra pulled a face. ‘I’d rather stay a virgin.’
‘I’d rather you did too,’ George said.
She glanced at him. ‘You’re a fine one to talk.’
‘Your mother was eighteen,’ he protested, then stopped. This was not a conversation he wanted to have with his sixteen-year-old daughter. ‘Did you meet her? Lady Rose?’
‘In other words, did I win a prize? Sorry, they don’t give one for car maintenance.’ Then, since that didn’t get the intended laugh, ‘Lady Rose is nearly as old as Annie. I suppose she must be getting desperate.’
He looked at the picture of the man beside her. ‘He’s not that old,’ he protested.
‘He’s thirty-nine. It says so right there.’
With his own thirty-sixth birthday in sight, that didn’t seem old to him, but when he’d been sixteen it would probably have seemed ancient.
‘It also says he’s rich. Owns a castle in Scotland, estates in Norfolk and Somerset and is heir to an earldom.’
‘I think that cancels out “old”,’ he countered, looking up from the photograph of the two of them leaving some function together to compare her with Annie.
If you ignored the clothes, the woolly hat pulled down to hide not just her hair but most of her forehead, the likeness was striking.
And Annie had admitted to cutting her hair, borrowing the clothes she was wearing. She’d even talked about security men watching her night and day.
If the evidence that she’d flown to some place called Bab el Sama hadn’t been right in front of him, it might have crossed his mind that Annie was Lady Rose Napier.
Assuming, of course, that she really had gone there. But why wouldn’t she? It was the ultimate getaway destination. Luxury, privacy.
Why would she swap that for this?
‘Rich, smitch,’ Xandra said dismissively. ‘Lady Rose doesn’t need the money. Her father was the Marquess of St Ives and he left her a fortune. And her grandfather is a duke.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Everything she does is news. She’s the virgin princess with a heart of gold. An example to us all.’
She clutched at her throat to mime throwing up.
‘I’d have thought a woman like that would be fighting off suitors.’
