the door wide, he waited for her to step inside and then closed the door behind her and led the way to the study. He was having second thoughts about this. Overnight, he’d almost convinced himself that she’d looked calculating. But she didn’t. She looked almost as eager as the damned dog. She also looked surprised, as though she’d expected him to hand the portfolio back at the door.
Moving to sit behind the desk, he looked down at the album that lay in front of him. There was still time to change his mind. He glanced at her, trying, perhaps, to analyse a face that defied analysis, then returned his attention to the album.
‘Did you find anything you liked?’ she asked eagerly. Moving to stand beside him, she flipped over the cover. ‘They all show before and after…’
He stared at her.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, her face rueful.
‘Sit,’ he ordered.
Obediently turning away, she walked to sit in the chair she’d used previously. Her eyes on his strong face as he flipped the cover closed and began tapping a fingernail on it, she tried to see signs of illness, and couldn’t. He didn’t look thin, or pale, and certainly his hair wasn’t falling out—but then perhaps he hadn’t had chemotherapy. Or maybe it had grown again. Maybe he was now better. Jen had said that the article was over six months old. Certainly he looked really rather—well, rugged, she supposed. He was freshly shaven, and wearing an expensive-looking light grey, short-sleeved shirt with his long legs encased in clean jeans. There was an aura of strength, determination about him. No way did he look like a man who was dying.
The phone rang, and she gave a little start. Garde ignored it; when she couldn’t bear the intrusive ring any longer, she demanded, ‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’
‘No.’
‘Well, don’t you have an answering machine? Surely all this equipment isn’t just for show?’
He ignored her. The phone, thankfully, finally stopped ringing.
‘Did you see the letters of—well, praise, I suppose you could say, in the rear pocket?’ she asked him. Best to mention them and perhaps, hopefully, he wouldn’t notice that the last one was more than a year old.
He didn’t answer, but then he didn’t seem to answer anything he didn’t want to, including his phone. It seemed a funny way to run a business. If he had a business. She should have paid more attention to what Jen had been saying.
Holding his eyes for long, long moments, unsure of what message, if any, he was sending, she rushed into speech. ‘I rang my sister last night, to tell her about you. I’d asked her to try and get hold of the magazine I didn’t have time to finish reading in the dentist’s. It said you had cancer,’ she blurted.
Amazingly, he laughed. Derisively, admittedly, but still a laugh. ‘And that accounts for your worried air this morning?’ he mocked.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘I was awake half the night thinking about it. I’m so sorry.’
‘No need to be,’ he said with an indifference that startled her. ‘It was a misprint.’
‘Misprint?’
‘Yes. It should have said I was driven by Cancer, the birth sign, not riven by it. The reporter was obviously into horoscopes. The printer or typesetter wasn’t.’
‘Oh,’ she commented inadequately, and then she smiled in relief. ‘I’m so glad.’
‘So am I,’ he agreed drily.
‘I didn’t think it made sense! It said you were successful.’
‘Did it?’ he asked with even more indifference.
‘Yes.’ Hiding a smile, watching his large, capable hands as he moved the album and began squaring papers on his desk, she felt comforted. Turning her attention to his profile, she decided that she liked very much what she saw. A strong, well-sculpted face. A man who made decisions and stuck to them. Perhaps. A man not given to small talk. A man who didn’t cheat? Someone who was perhaps slightly intimidating to anyone other than Sorrel—who was rarely intimidated by anyone.
‘Who took the photographs?’ he suddenly asked.
‘I did.’
He nodded.
‘You don’t believe I’m a landscape gardener, do you?’ she asked quietly. She’d often had this rather dubious response before.
‘I believe you know about gardens,’ he qualified.
With a little frown on her face, remembering his almost paranoia about secrecy the day before, she continued, ‘You don’t think I did the gardens in the photographs?’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes. Yesterday,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘and even now, you seem to be implying that I might be something else. Is that it?’ Had Nick got to him? Had he somehow found out she was coming down here? No, he couldn’t have done. So why was Garde Chevenay being so suspicious? ‘I don’t understand why you seem to suspect me of ulterior motives.’
‘Your behaviour?’ he prompted.
‘But I’m always like this. Or do you mean because I turned up so unexpectedly? But that was because—’
‘I didn’t answer your letter—yes, you said.’
‘And I’m sure you’re quite capable of snubbing any pretensions I might have, if that’s what’s worrying you.’
‘It isn’t. Do you?’ he asked drily. ‘Have pretensions?’
‘No,’ she denied slowly and really rather worriedly. She had never thought she looked like a person on the make, and yet, this last year…
‘And now?’ he asked.
‘Now?’ she echoed in confusion.
‘Yes. What will you do now, Miss James?’
So he didn’t want her, she thought despondently. Why invite her in, then? Why prolong the agony? ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘If you don’t want me to do your gardens, I go away, back where I came from.’
‘To do what?’
Wavering between honesty and pride, she stated almost defiantly, ‘Whatever I can. I’ve been helping out in a garden centre for the past few months.’ There was no need to tell him she was no longer required, and, remembering why she’d been forced to eke out her existence in such a manner, and in no mood now to prolong a conversation about her work, or lack of it, she got to her feet. ‘Well,’ she added abruptly, ‘I’d better be going. I have a long drive ahead of me. It was nice to have met you, Mr Chevenay.’ Reaching out, she picked up her portfolio.
‘You no longer wish to do my gardens?’ he asked blandly.
‘Well, of course I want to do them! But you aren’t going to let me, are you? So there’s really no—’
‘Aren’t
