Valentine Vendetta

He managed to make it sound as though he was making an appointment for her at the dentist—and come to think of it, her adrenalin levels were as high as they might have been if he were a dentist! ‘In London?’ she guessed hopefully, since Rosie had already informed her that he had a flat in town and a house somewhere in the country.

‘No, in Cambridge,’ he stated.

‘Cambridge,’ she repeated faintly, her heart sinking as she thought of travelling to the flat, ploughed fields of the fens on a filthy cold November afternoon. Maybe on a fool’s mission.

‘Is getting to Cambridge going to be a problem for you, Miss Fisher?’ he questioned. ‘It’s hardly on the other side of the world, you know!’

Rule number one: a party-planner must be prepared for any eventuality! ‘Problem? None whatsoever!’ she lied cheerfully. ‘Just give me a few easy-to-understand directions and I’ll be there in time for tea!’

‘I can hardly wait,’ he said, and Fran could have sworn that he was laughing at her.

The light was already fading from the sky when the train pulled into Eversford station and the bleak, unwelcoming platform made Fran feel as though she was on the film-set of an old-fashioned murder mystery.

She knotted her scarf tightly around her neck and looked around. Sam Lockhart had told her where she could get a cab and she walked out of the station into the dreary afternoon, where a fine mist of grey rain clogged the air and slicked onto the roofs of the cars like grease.

There was no one else in the queue and the driver looked at her with interest as she told him the name of the house.

‘Sam Lockhart’s place,’ he commented, as he switched on his meter and pulled out of the station forecourt.

‘You know it?’

‘Should do. He brings us plenty of work. Thought that’s where you’d be headed,’ he said, smiling.

Fran, who was hunting around in her handbag for a mirror, paused, mid-search. ‘Oh?’ She smiled back. ‘Can you guess where all your passengers are headed, then?’

‘No. Just his.’ The driver stopped at some red lights and grinned at her in his rear mirror. ‘If it’s someone glamorous getting off the London train, then the odds are that she wants to go out to Sam Lockhart’s place!’

Fran bristled as the driver’s giveaway remark reminded her why she was here in the first place. Poor Rosie! ‘Oh?’ She thought how indignant she sounded! ‘He has a whole stream of women arriving here, does he?’

The driver shook his head hastily. ‘Oh, no! Never more than one at a time!’ he joked. ‘And we only notice because nothing much happens around here. It’s a pretty isolated place.’

‘So I see.’ Fran looked out of the window as the buildings and lights of the town began to get more sparse and the landscape began to acquire the vast, untouched emptiness of perfectly flat countryside. It could have been boring, but she thought that it had a stark, distinctive beauty all of its own. Even so, its very bleakness did not fit in with her idea of where a sex god would live. Why had he chosen to settle out here, she wondered, when he could be raving it up in London? ‘Is it very far?’

‘Another couple of miles,’ he answered, slowing the car right down as the lane narrowed. ‘Writer, are you?’

‘Not me, I’m afraid!’ she told him cheerfully, and picked up her hand mirror to see what sort of face Sam Lockhart would be greeted by.

Unexciting was the word which immediately sprang to mind.

Her skin looked too pale, but then it always did—and the green-gold eyes could have done with a little more mascara to make the best of them. But apart from the fact that she had left in a hurry, Fran had deliberately played safe, unwilling to look as though she’d spent hours in front of the mirror in an effort to impress Sam Lockhart. Apart from the fact that it just wasn’t her style—sex gods were used to women slapping on the entire contents of their make-up bags. She knew that from living with her husband. So she would be different. Because there was one other thing she knew about that particular breed of man…they were easily bored and something different always intrigued them.

So she had contented herself with a slick of nude lipstick which simply looked like she had been licking her lips. Just enough make-up to look as though she wasn’t wearing any at all—but only a woman would be able to tell that!

‘Here we are!’ said the driver. The car slowed down and began indicating right as a high, dark hedge began to loom up beside them. Before her stretched a long drive which curved off unexpectedly to the left, and impulse made her lean over to tap the driver on the shoulder.

‘Would you mind stopping here?’ she asked.

‘It’s a long drive.’

‘I can see that. I don’t mind walking. In fact I’d rather walk. I just want to get the…feel…of the place first.’ That first gut reaction to someone’s home was invaluable. Houses and owners taken unawares told you volumes about what they were really like—and the better you knew a client, the better you would be able to judge the perfect party for their particular needs. A car drawing up outside would alert Sam Lockhart to her arrival and that would not do. She wanted to see the face of the seducer taken off guard.

Ignoring the driver’s curious expression, she paid her fare and gave him a healthy tip.

‘Thanks very much, Miss. Will you be wanting to go back to the station…tonight?’ He put the question so delicately that Fran might have laughed if she weren’t feeling so indignant on Rosie’s behalf. What was Lockhart running here, for goodness’ sake? A harem?

‘Yes, I will,’ she answered crisply. ‘But I don’t know what time that will be—so if you’d give me one of your cards I’ll ring.’

She waited until the red tail-lights of the car had retreated before setting off up the wide path, her sensible brown leather boots sending little shoals of gravel spraying in her wake.