A Wild Affair

'I want to have a word with your passenger,' said Joe, pulling a five-pound note out of his pocket and flinging it to the driver, who automatically grabbed it, looking startled.

'Well, sir, all the same, you shouldn't jump on the running board while I'm moving, you could get killed doing things like that,' he scolded.

'Sorry,' said Joe, and gave him a hurried smile. 'I wasn't thinking.'

'It's Mr Aldonez, isn't it? I've just been listening to you on the radio,' the driver said, and Brendan with a face like thunder got up and pulled the window down to say: 'We're in a hurry, what do you want, Aldonez? Quincy doesn't want to talk to you.'

'I want to talk to her,' said Joe, appearing close beside the window. His eyes bypassed Brendan to find Quincy and she looked away, sitting stiffly in the far corner. 'Quincy, I must talk to you!'

'I want to have a word with you,' said the traffic warden behind him. 'You can't park that car on a double yellow line, you know that perfectly well.

Kindly move

the car immediately and park in a legal parking space.'

Joe ignored her, all his attention concentrating on Quincy's averted face. 'I haven't got much time,' he said huskily.

'Don't you know when you're not wanted?' Brendan asked him, getting a black stare in reply.

'Here, you!' said the traffic warden, tapping Joe on the shoulder. 'Are you listening to me?'

'Wait a minute,' he muttered without looking at her.

'Who do you think you're talking to? Some people have a nerve! Just because you're driving some car worth a fortune you think you can ignore traffic laws, don't you? Well, you can't, mister. I don't care who you are, you're not parking on a double yellow line in my zone!' She was scribbling on a sheet of paper as she talked and Joe's head swivelled to watch her as she stalked over to his car and stuck the ticket under his windscreen wiper. Arms akimbo, she gave him a triumphant glare. 'And if you haven't moved it in five minutes, it'll be towed away to the police car pound,' she promised with every sign of extreme satisfaction.

'You know what you are?' Joe roared, striding back towards his car. 'If there's one thing I can't stand it's petty bureaucrats in uniform!'

The taxi driver, sympathetically excited, stuck his head out of his window to watch. 'Put a woman in a uniform and what do you get? Mother Hitler,' he commented.

'Are you parked there or are you taking those people somewhere?' the traffic warden demanded before her attention was distracted by Joe, who, with a savage expression, had snatched the ticket from his windscreen and was ripping it to shreds and throwing the little fragments up into the air. 'Here! I suppose you think that's funny?' she shrieked, turning on him.

'No,' Joe snarled. 'I'm not in the least amused, madam.'

Brendan leaned forward and tapped on the glass between them and the driver. 'We're in a hurry, drive on.'

The man threw a look back at Joe, hesitating, remembering the five-pound note he had been given.

'We'll miss our train if we don't go now,' urged Brendan, and the man shrugged.

Quincy sat, cold and miserable, in the corner as the taxi moved off, hearing Joe's voice behind them. 'Quincy!'

She knew what he had wanted to say to her, she didn't need to hear it. Joe had come to say goodbye, but she had already said it to him in her heart, it didn't need saying aloud.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Quincy might have imagined that in leaving London behind she would also be escaping from the attentions of the press, but, as she discovered when she got out of a taxi outside her home, she was sadly mistaken. A flashbulb exploded, almost blinding her, as she turned towards the gate, and the next moment a young man in a leather jacket was giving her a coaxing smile and asking breathlessly: 'How does it feel to be back home, Quincy?' Still dazed after the surprise of the flashbulb, Quincy automatically said: 'Fine,' before she halted, her mouth open.

'What was it like having a date with Joe Aldonez? Will you be seeing him again? What did he say to you?'

Since she made no attempt to answer any of the questions, merely stared at him, going crimson with growing rage, he rushed on to the next one, apparently in the hope of startling some sort of answer out of her. 'What happened when you had dinner with him?'

Brendan had paid off the driver and was manhandling the cases out on to the road. Taking in what was going on, he dropped them both and took two rapid steps, grabbing the young man by his collar.

'Here, what're you up to?' the reporter gurgled as Brendan bundled him away from Quincy. The photographer took a couple of quick pictures before he fled to their waiting car. Brendan frogmarched the reporter after him and bawled: 'And don't come back!' before he returned to join Quincy, who had taken advantage of his rescue attempt to flee towards the house. The front door opened and her mother smiled at her.

'Mum!' Quincy almost wailed, on the point of breaking into childish tears, and Mrs Jones looked sharply at her, her smile vanishing.

'Whatever is the matter? Is it those journalists? They've been hanging about all afternoon, I told them to go away but they took no notice. I should have called the police. Did they pester you?'