Dangerous Interloper

Ben remained for another half an hour, patiently going over the plans with them. Miranda deliberately kept herself in the background, but all the time she was acutely conscious of him; of the way he moved, of the way he spoke, but most of all of the way he would occasionally search the table, as though deliberately looking for her.

Which must be her imagination, because he could have no reason for wanting to seek her out, even if when he had walked in here earlier in the evening he had verbally implied that there was an intimacy between them… a relationship.

Which was all nonsense. She was letting her small-town upbringing blot out reality. Ben was a big-city man; in the city a man could claim the acquaintance of a woman without anyone else in earshot immediately assuming that he was romantically interested in her.

Not in this town he couldn’t, though. By tomorrow it would be all over the place… a juicy item of gossip to be relished over morning coffee.

Quite deliberately, when Ben was taking his leave of the others Miranda escaped to the Ladies. She wasn’t going to be singled out by him again and add even further fuel to the gossip.

As it was, when she returned she had to run the gauntlet of several curious and assessing looks, not to mention head off the questions of several of her co-committee members.

When the meeting broke up at half-past ten, she was tired enough to be glad she was going straight home.

As she edged her way through the now crowded bar, she heard Ralph Charlesworth’s raised voice from one of the tables.

Ralph was a heavy drinker in addition to his other unpleasant traits. His voice sounded slurred and angry.

As Miranda headed for the door she heard him saying viciously, ‘Well, if he thinks he can get away with this, I’ll soon show him different,’ and the shiver that struck her skin as she walked outside wasn’t entirely due to the cool night air.

If, as she suspected, Ralph had been talking about Ben, then Ben had made a bad enemy. Ralph didn’t play by the rules, and if Ben had dismissed him and got in fresh contractors… Her conscience urged her that someone would have to warn Ben that Ralph could be out to make trouble for him, but she couldn’t face the thought of contacting him herself. Perhaps if she spoke with her father. She sighed faintly as she unlocked her car. It was unfortunate that Helen should be related to Ralph’s wife, but then this was the sort of thing that happened in a small town, and Helen herself made no bones about her dislike of her relative by marriage.

Yes, in the morning she would have to have a word with her father. She ignored the small voice that warned her that she could save time and effort by getting in touch with Ben direct, thinking bitterly, So what if she was being a coward? Wasn’t it better to be a coward than to risk the pain of…?

Of what? Of loving someone who didn’t return that love?

Loving someone…

This was ridiculous, she told herself grimly as she drove home. As far as she was concerned, love and Ben Frobisher were two completely opposing forces.

But what if they weren’t… what if they could be combined… what if…?

What if she stopped daydreaming and concentrated on reality for a change? she told herself sternly. What if she gave her time and attention not to daydreaming, but to working out how on earth she was going to find an effective counter to the rumours that would be running like summer weeds through the town by this time tomorrow?

It was too late now to regret her outspoken and oft-voiced views on the idiocy of falling in love, on the repressive state of marriage, at least where a woman was concerned, and her belief that a career and the independence that went with it were far more fulfilling than marriage and children.

All right, so maybe recently she had started to wonder if she hadn’t perhaps been a little too vehement in her outspokenness… if she perhaps hadn’t taken a long enough view and seen that maybe, just maybe, if a woman was determined and cool-headed enough, she could have it all—career, independence, marriage and children; but as yet this turn-around in her thinking was still her own secret.

The news that she was apparently involved with a man like Ben Frobisher was bound to provoke a good deal of light-hearted, and some not so light-hearted amusement at her expense. And of course once they had actually seen him, none of her friends was ever going to believe that she hadn’t fallen head over heels in love with him.

Damn, damn, damn, she swore crossly. Why did he have to decide to move here and cause me all this trouble? Well, there was one thing he most definitely was not going to do and that was spoil a second night’s sleep for her. Tonight there would be no dreams about intensely passionate kisses, no nocturnal yearnings for the kind of physical intimacy that surely belonged to one’s teenage years, and not to the maturity of one’s late twenties.

CHAPTER FIVE

MIRANDA sighed as the telephone on her desk shrilled abruptly, breaking into her train of thought. She was still only halfway through the monthly piece on the housing market which she wrote for the local paper. Normally this was a task she thoroughly enjoyed, but today for some reason she was finding it difficult to focus her thoughts on her writing.

She reached for the receiver automatically, stifling her irritation when she heard the excited voice of one of her friends.

‘Well, you are a dark horse, aren’t you?’ she was challenged. ‘You never said a word to us about Ben Frobisher when you had dinner with John and me last week—’

‘Because there wasn’t anything to tell you, and there still isn’t,’ Miranda interrupted her firmly.

Obviously the town grapevine had got to work even more speedily than she had envisaged.

‘Oh, come on. It’s all over town, how he couldn’t take his eyes off you at last night’s meeting…’

‘Rubbish,’ Miranda told her curtly. ‘I barely know the man.’

‘You were with him at th

e golf club do,’ her friend pointed out slyly. ‘Or is that just a rumour, too?’

Miranda paused and then admitted wryly, ‘No, but I was partnering him simply because he’s a business associate. Nothing more.’

‘Uh-huh, so that passionate clinch the two of you were seen in was just—er—a business discussion, was it?’

Miranda knew she was trapped. Jenny was a good friend whom she valued, but she wasn’t very good at keeping secrets and if Miranda told her the real reason Ben had been kissing her… well, it was impossible, she just couldn’t.

‘You could have a June wedding,’ Jenny was telling her excitedly. ‘There’s still time.’

‘Jenny!’ Miranda expostulated impatiently. ‘Ben Frobisher and I barely know one another, and as for our getting married… well, that’s impossible.’

‘Really? Does he know that? From what I’ve heard, he sounds like one very determined man. A very dishy man as well, by all accounts. Look, why don’t you bring him over to dinner one night? We’d love to meet him.’

Miranda groaned.

‘Jenny for the last time, Ben Frobisher and I do not have the sort of relationship that extends to going out to dinner together.’

‘Mm. Still at the stage when you prefer to be alone together, is that it? I remember when I first met John…’

Knowing how impossible it was to get her friend to change tack once she had set her mind in a certain groove, Miranda gave up. At least now Jenny had been distracted into talking about her own life, and as for the rumours and gossip which were obviously flying about the town… well, the proof of the pudding, as the saying went, was in the eating, and although she suspected she was going to be in for an uncomfortable month or so while everyone speculated on the outcome of her imagined relationship with Ben, once people realised that there simply was no relationship, the gossip would die down.