‘Yes, well, she’s been surrounded by bodyguards all her life, has a posse of photographers in her face wherever she goes and she has a whiter than white image to maintain. She can never let her hair down, kick off and have fun like everyone else, can she?’ She thought about it for a moment. ‘Actually, you’ve got to feel just a bit sorry for her.’
‘Have you?’ he asked, thinking about the way Annie had reached out to him last night. Her whispered ‘I don’t want to be safe’. ‘What about you, Annie?’
‘Do I feel sorry for her?’ she asked, looking at the picture.
That was what he’d meant, but there was something about the way she was avoiding his eyes that bothered him.
‘Would you marry the old guy in the picture?’ he pressed.
She looked up then. Straight, direct. ‘Not unless I was in love with him.’
‘Oh, puh-lease,’ Xandra said. Then, taking back the paper, she compared the two pictures and shrugged. ‘Maybe she is in love. There was a rumour going around that she was anorexic, but she looks a lot better here. It’s a pity, really.’
‘What is?’ he asked, never taking his eyes off Annie.
It all fitted, he thought.
The timing was right. The poise. He’d even thought that she was acting as if she were royalty when she’d left him to close the tow-truck door behind her. He doubted that Lady Rose Napier, with a chauffeur and bodyguards in attendance, had ever had to do that in her life.
But it had to be coincidence. There was a likeness, it was true, but wasn’t everyone supposed to have a double somewhere? And why on earth would a woman with a fortune at her command take off in a rattle bucket car when she could be going first-class all the way to paradise with Mr Big?
‘What’s a pity?’ he repeated sharply.
Xandra gave an awkward little shrug, shook her head, clearly embarrassed, which had to be a first.
‘Nothing. It’s just that in the earlier picture the likeness is more pronounced.’
When she was thinner? A little less attractive? Was that what his tactless daughter had stopped herself from saying?
‘But if Annie worked at it a bit, grew her hair, had the right clothes, make-up, I bet one of those lookalike agencies would snap her up.’
Annie opened her mouth, presumably to protest, but Xandra wasn’t finished.
‘You’d have to wear high heels,’ she went on, getting carried away in her enthusiasm. ‘She’s really tall. But I bet that if you put on a pound or two you could do it.’
‘What about the eyes?’ George said, trying to see her not in baggy jeans, a chain store fleece jacket with a woolly hat pulled down to cover her hair, but a designer gown cut low to reveal creamy shoulders, long hair swept up. Her face transformed with make-up. Jewels at her throat. He seemed to get stuck on the shoulders…‘Aren’t they the big giveaway?’
‘What?’ she said, her attention shifting to the sound of a tractor pulling into the car park. She dropped the paper, more interested in what was happening outside. ‘Oh, that’s not a problem. She could use contacts.’
‘Of course she could,’ he said, his own attention focused firmly on the woman sitting on the far side of the table. ‘So does that appeal as a career move?’
The corner of Annie’s mouth lifted in a wry smile. ‘You mean if I were a little younger, a little taller, wore a wig, contacts and plenty of make-up?’
‘And if you put on a few pounds,’ he reminded her. A little weight to fill out the hollows beneath her collarbone. Hollows that matched those of Lady Rose Napier in her evening gown.
‘Much more of your mother’s meat pie and buttered toast and that won’t be a problem,’ she replied, the smile a little deeper, but still wry.
‘As good a reason to stay as any other,’ he suggested. ‘As long as you remember to add garlic to the mash.’
‘Are you suggesting that I’m scrawny?’
‘The trees are here, George.’ His daughter impatiently demanded his attention and he pushed back his chair, got to his feet, never taking his eyes off Annie.
‘Not if I have any sense,’ he replied. ‘And you can save the expense of contact lenses. Your eye colour is more than a match for the people’s virgin.’
He took her glasses from his pocket and, taking her hand, placed them in her palm, closing her fingers over them, holding them in place as he was held by Annie’s vivid gaze.
‘They look an awful lot bigger on the trailer than they did growing,’ Xandra said, breaking the spell. ‘Will they be safe on the roof?’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, telling himself that he was glad of the distraction. ‘If it’s going to be a problem I’m sure your lovelorn swain will be happy to offer a personal delivery service.’
‘My what? Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ she said, rolling her eyes at him before stomping down the steps and striding across the car park.
‘I’d better go and find some rope,’ he said, still not moving.
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ Annie asked, the glasses still clutched in her hand.
‘I think you’ve done more than enough for one day, Annie. If you don’t fancy lookalike work, you could always take up acting.’
‘Acting?’
He noted the nervous swallow, the heightened colour that flushed across her cheekbones with relief. Despite his earlier suspicion that she might be a practised con woman, it was clear that, whatever she was hiding, she wasn’t a practised liar.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with your ankle,’ he said bluntly.
‘Oh.’ The colour deepened. ‘How did you guess?’
‘I’ve rarely encountered one in less perfect condition,’ he said, reliving the feel of it beneath his palm. ‘In fact, I’m seriously hoping that you’ll take Xandra’s advice to heart about wearing high heels.’
‘I didn’t pack any.’
‘No? Well, you can’t run in high heels, can you?’
‘If you hadn’t gone all macho over the car-’
‘Oh, right. Blame the sucker.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ she protested. ‘I just thought-’
‘I know what you thought,’ he said curtly, before she could say the words out loud. Determined to crush any foolish notion that throwing him into close proximity with Xandra would produce a cosy father-daughter bond. ‘I have no doubt you imagined you were helping, but some relationships can’t be fixed.’
No matter how much you might regret that.
‘Not without putting a little effort into it,’ she came right back at him, her eyes flashing with more than a touch of anger as if he’d lit some personal touchpaper. The air seemed to fizzle with it and he wondered what would have happened if, instead of listening to his head last night and walking away, he’d listened to her.
‘
He took a step back, needing to put some space between them, but she wasn’t done.
‘Don’t give up on her, George,’ she said, leaning towards him, appealing to him. ‘Don’t give up on yourself.’
‘I’m sure you mean well, Annie, but don’t waste your time playing Santa Claus. It’s not going to happen.’ He pushed the paper towards her. ‘You’d be better occupied thinking about your own future than worrying about mine. What you’re going to do next week. The money you’ve got stashed in your underwear isn’t going to last very long when you’re out there on your own.’
Reminding her that she might have found a temporary sanctuary, but that was all it was.
Reminding himself.
Annie let out a long silent breath as he walked away, but it had more to do with the anger, the pain that had come off him like a blast of ice than fear that he’d seen through her disguise.
Although maybe, she thought, looking down at the glasses in her hand, maybe she should be worrying about
