One Penny Surprise (Saved By Desire 1)

She looked down at the bag in her hand and contemplated what to do. The longer she waited, the more the small hairs on the back of her neck began to stand on end. Unless her imagination was running away with her danger was afoot. She was almost certainly being watched. She could practically feel eyes boring into her back from somewhere nearby but where? Why? If it was the person she was here to meet why had he not asked for the bag? It was all deuced odd and reiterated the fact that the decision she had made to keep the money and leave was the right one.

“Wherever you are, if you cannot come to me then you can do without,” she muttered loud enough for anyone lurking in the trees to be able to hear. After waiting for a minute more, she turned around and was about to march back down the path when something in the middle of the river captured her attention.

“What on earth?” Her brows dipped low as she tried to figure out what it was. At first glance it appeared to be a bag of some kind, but it was too large and billowy; the material too fine. The soft clip of her footsteps faltered. Her heart rate increased the closer she got to the strange object being carried along by the gentle flow of the water. Pure gut instinct warned her she wasn’t going to like what she would discover if she ventured any further, but it was unconscionable to even think about simply turning around and walking away. There was something decidedly odd about that rather large object, and she suspected she knew what it was.

“Oh, my word,” she whispered as the distinctive shape of a head bobbed into view before it was enveloped by the sodden material. She swallowed harshly as her gaze ran over the large cloud of what she suspected was cotton, and the white sleeve from which a ghostly hand protruded, its fingers limp and lifeless as it was carried inch by inch closer to the spot where she stood. The slow, almost ethereal way it floated and bobbed toward her was just as unnerving as the silence that surrounded her. Every instinct she possessed screamed at her to turn around and run. She wanted to scream; she wanted to cry; she wanted the handsome stranger to reappear. She wanted the man she was there to meet to turn up so she could give him the bag and just go back to the hovel, but she couldn’t. Nobody else was around.

At the moment she couldn’t get her mind to work well enough to think clearly about anything. Her life had just descended into a pseudo world where nothing really made sense any more. She threw a worried glance back down the path behind her and almost wished the pick-pockets would return. Maybe she should go and search for them? Right now she would prefer to be in their company than left with a dead man.

Should she run and fetch help? She couldn’t just ignore the fact that she had seen the corpse. The image alone would haunt her for the rest of her days. Her conscience wouldn’t allow her to forget that this man was, or had been a person. He must have a family or loved ones nearby waiting for him. It was unconscionable to even think about leaving the scene and simply forgetting all about it. After all, he could just float off. Having never been to this park before she had no idea where the river went. Did it merge into the Thames, several miles away, meander into a lake, or go on for miles out into the countryside somewhere? She daren’t take her eyes off it in case it vanished, floated away, and was never found again so she couldn’t really leave it and fetch help.

“Why does this have to happen to me?” she groused with a sigh. She threw a dark, almost challenging glare toward the trees, hoping against hope that her contact would come out of the woods to meet her. Unsurprisingly though, there was no sign of him. Had he seen the body and decided to stay away?

“Coward,” she snapped. A tendril of a thought that her contact might be responsible for the fate of the dead man in the river was quickly quashed, but it didn’t help ease the fear and worry that remained.

Clenching her bag tighter, she reluctantly hurried toward the trees and eventually found what she was looking for. Armed with a large stick, she followed the deceased down the river until she was a little ahead of it. Because the stick was long enough to reach the middle of the river it was unwieldy and difficult to manoeuvre with one of her hands full of her bag, but there was no possibility of her putting it down because of the nature of the contents. As a result, she was forced to manoeuvre the stick awkwardly into the collar of the shirt and try to tug the floating corpse toward her. It was the last thing she wanted to d

o, mostly because she was squeamish and didn’t like the thought of what she might find should it flip over, but she did it anyway. She had no idea yet what she was going to do once she got him to the riverbank. He looked too big for her to manhandle by herself, but she couldn’t leave him where he was.

“What then?” she mumbled as she began to tug the body toward the riverbank. “If I get him onto the bank and get someone to fetch the magistrate, he is going to want to know what a single, unchaperoned female is doing here all by herself just before dawn on a cold, autumnal morning.”

“Now what?” she whispered. She stared at the man whose head bumped gently against the soft earth beneath her feet and tried to decide what to do now. The last thing she was ever going to do was touch him. She had never touched a dead body in her life before and had no intention of starting with this one. She couldn’t leave either.

“Where are you when I need you?” she whispered, glancing around hopefully for any sign of the handsome gentleman’s return. As she did so, a tendril of a thought began to unfurl in the back of her mind, and refused to relinquish its hold.

Was the body the reason the gentleman had been in the park so early? She knew why she was there, and it wasn’t just for a walk. It seemed incredibly early in the morning for any well-to-do gentleman to take a stroll, so what was he doing there? He must have seen the body floating in the river. The white of the man’s shirt against the murky brown of the water stood out to anyone with eyes in their head. Was he the one responsible for the man’s death? Was that why he had been running away from the area with such determination?

Unfortunately, with her options limited, partly by conscience and partly by the money she still held, Poppy had little choice but to summon the help she needed in the only way she could. Sucking in a huge breath, she opened her mouth and screamed for the second time that morning.

Luke bent over at the waist and shook his head in disgust as he stared at the retreating backs of the young children. He watched them launch themselves over the metal railings at the far end of the park and high-tail it down the road without a backward look. It was clear that they knew exactly where they were going. If only he could get there he would know where they were going too, but that woman was screaming again.

“Damned fool woman. Can’t she scream any louder? She shouldn’t be out here all by herself for God’s sake,” he snarled in disgust.

He contemplated just ignoring her. Whatever she had gotten into this time was her own fault. She should know better than to hang around in a park at dawn. However, that said, he had spent far too many years working within the Star Elite. It went against everything he was to ignore the cries of a damsel in distress. From the sound of it, whatever had happened to her had distressed the woman terribly. She was screaming loud enough to wake the dead. Unfortunately, there didn’t appear to be anybody but him nearby to race to her rescue, so it was down to him to bail her out of trouble – again.

“Why am I cursed like this?” he demanded of the skies as, with one last filthy glare after the pick-pockets, he turned around and wiped a thin sheen of sweat off his brow as he headed back down the path to where he had left the woman moments earlier. It didn’t take long to find her. He just followed the sound of the hideous racket she was making.

“What is it now?” he growled as he stalked toward her. He didn’t bother to mask his anger and glared at her with all the bitter frustration he felt at having lost sight of the pick-pockets. “Do you not have a chaperone?” he demanded pointedly.

Poppy glanced around them and shook her head, now blessedly silent.

“Why are you out here all alone?” he demanded. The words ‘damned fool woman that you are’, hung between them but he didn’t give them a voice.

Poppy shook her head. Over the last couple of minutes, the body had started to float back out to the river. Her stomach roiled alarmingly in protest as the macabre reality of her discovery finally sank in. She just couldn’t bring herself to go after it.

“Oh God,” she whispered, staring in horror at the handsome man who was now glaring at her as though she had committed some heinous crime.

“What is it?” he demanded when she didn’t seem inclined to answer any of his questions. When she merely stared at him, opening and closing her mouth like a stunned codfish, he shook his head and swore loudly even though he was in the presence of a lady. It was then that he realised she was pointing to something at the end of a stick.

“What is it? It’s just a shirt.” Luke growled. He threw the white shirt someone had lost in the water a dismissive glance and tried not to stare at her now that he was close.

She was incredibly beautiful; young, with an unlined oval face that was nothing short of perfection. The thin slash of her brows were high and arched over eyes that were the warmest amber he had ever seen. Framed by a thick fan of lashes that were nothing short of sensual, and combined with a long main of haphazardly coiled hair, the tendrils of which curled teasingly against her alabaster cheeks, she looked like an exotic goddess. He felt an invisible pull of something undefinable as he studied the slightly rounded curves barely hidden beneath a well- worn shawl that had seen better days. When his body began to react to her nearness he forced his attention back to the reason he was there.

“Miss?” He eyed her ring finger and mentally heaved a sigh of relief when he found it empty. Until she corrected him, he would call her ‘miss’ and see what happened when she came out of the shock she appeared to be in.

He frowned at the surface of the water when it was evident she was transfixed by the floating shirt, and not for the first time that morning dug deep for his patience.

“It’s only a shirt,” he groused ruefully. His scowl deepened when she slowly shook her head.