‘Because he feels sorry for you,’ Patsy answered. ‘We both do.’
Rose winced, hating the thought of the two of them discussing her.
‘Josh can leave for America any time he likes, as far as I’m concerned,’ Rose defended herself fiercely.
‘Then why don’t you tell your solicitor to get the partnership ended? Like I said, Josh is only hanging on here because he feels he owes you something.’
Patsy stood up, her hair swinging immaculately onto her shoulders, her mini revealing the long length of her slim legs. Her whole bearing was one of triumph as she walked out of the room, leaving Rose too upset to focus on the work she had been doing.
She’d been thinking of calling round to see Emerald later. Ridiculously, she’d been worrying about her cousin–not that she had expected Emerald to welcome a visit from her–but now she felt too vulnerable to see anyone, never mind Emerald.
An hour later, when she was still unable to concentrate on her work, Rose decided that there was no point in continuing to sit at her desk doing nothing other than think about Josh and her own misery. She had always found that walking was a good cure for her occasional creative blocks, and right now she needed to escape from her workroom, where the air still smelled of Patsy’s scent, even though Rose had opened the windows to dispel it.
She was wearing a silk shift with a pop art design on it in tangerine and black against a white background, the striking combination perfect for her colouring, several fine thin gold bangles circling her wrist. As she caught sight of herself in the mirror, she noticed that her hair needed trimming. She had stuck to the same shiny bob for several years now; Josh claimed that it was the perfect style for her. But soon there would be no Josh to cut her hair for her, no Josh to hold secretly in her thoughts and her heart late at night when she couldn’t sleep, no Josh to talk to about her work. No Josh, full stop.
Her hand was reaching for the door handle when it turned, and the door opened inwards to reveal Pete Sargent.
His greeting was accompanied by a long curling smile, which unexpectedly set off a fizz of reaction inside Rose’s stomach.
‘Pete, you’re back.’ What an inane comment to make, Rose derided herself. Obviously he was back; he was standing there.
‘Got back yesterday.’
He looked lean and tanned, his jeans clinging to his thighs, the top buttons of his shirt unfastened, his hair curling into his collar. He looked rough and untidy and very sexy.
‘So I thought I’d call by and see if you were free for lunch.’
Of course she should say ‘no’. After all, they had nothing in common, she assured herself hastily, not wanting to remember exactly what they did have in common. In fact, she was opening her mouth to turn him down when she had a sudden image of Patsy’s smug expression when she’d spoken to her earlier.
‘I was just going for a walk,’ Rose told him instead.
‘Great. I’ll come with you. We can walk in the park and have a picnic.’
‘We can’t do that,’ she protested, although in reality the prospect was very tempting.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you are Pete Sargent. You’ll be mobbed by fans, hordes of screaming girls.’
‘I’ll wear a disguise, and if that doesn’t work then you’ll just have to protect me from them.’
It was no use, Rose realised, he was not going to give in, and besides, he had just made her laugh, for the first time in a very long time indeed.
Reaching for her hand, he added, ‘Of course, if you really wanted to protect me you could always marry me.’
Rose laughed again.
‘Don’t laugh,’ he told her. ‘I mean it.’
‘But, Mummy, I don’t want to go back to London’.
Emerald had arrived at Denham just over an hour ago to find that her mother had already told Robbie that she intended to take him back to London with her, and now her son was looking reproachfully at her. His dark hair was flopping over his forehead. Emerald raised her hand to push it out of his eyes, about to comment that he needed a haircut, and then stopped.
‘Apart from anything else you need a haircut.’ A hazy memory stored many years previously came into sudden sharp focus of another boy with the same dark hair and the same stance. Luc, of course. Funny how the memory could store such things–things the brain should have been too immature perhaps to register because she could only have been a two-year-old at most, at the time. Luc would have been older than Robbie, but not much.
Robbie, who had been on the point of scowling, suddenly broke into a wide smile, announcing enthusiastically, ‘Uncle Drogo’s here,’ before setting off at a run across the lawn towards the two men coming out of the house.
Without looking at her mother, Emerald said, ‘He looks like Luc.’