you mind stopping here?’ she asked.
‘It’s a long drive.’
‘I can see that. I don’t mind walking. In fact I’d rather walk. I just want to get the…feel…of the place first.’ That first gut reaction to someone’s home was invaluable. Houses and owners taken unawares told you volumes about what they were really like—and the better you knew a client, the better you would be able to judge the perfect party for their particular needs. A car drawing up outside would alert Sam Lockhart to her arrival and that would not do. She wanted to see the face of the seducer taken off guard.
Ignoring the driver’s curious expression, she paid her fare and gave him a healthy tip.
‘Thanks very much, Miss. Will you be wanting to go back to the station…tonight?’ He put the question so delicately that Fran might have laughed if she weren’t feeling so indignant on Rosie’s behalf. What was Lockhart running here, for goodness’ sake? A harem?
‘Yes, I will,’ she answered crisply. ‘But I don’t know what time that will be—so if you’d give me one of your cards I’ll ring.’
She waited until the red tail-lights of the car had retreated before setting off up the wide path, her sensible brown leather boots sending little shoals of gravel spraying in her wake.
The grounds—they were much too extensive to be called a garden—wore the muddy, leafless brown of a winter coat, but the sparse flower-beds were curved and beautifully shaped, and the trees had been imaginatively planted to stand dramatically against the huge, bare sky.
The house was old. A beautifully proportioned whitewashed villa which was perfect in its simplicity.
And it looked deserted.
Moving quietly, Fran crept forward to peer into one of the leaded windows at the front of the house, and nearly died with shock when she saw a man sitting in there, before the golden flicker of a log fire. A dark, denim-clad figure sprawled in a comfortable-looking armchair, his long legs stretched in front of him as he read from what looked like a manuscript.
She came to within nose-pressing distance of the window and her movement must have caught his attention, for he looked up from his reading and his dark-featured face registered no emotion whatsoever at seeing her standing there. Not surprise or fright or irritation. Not even a mild curiosity.
Then he pointed a rather dismissive finger in the direction of the front of the house and mimed, ‘the door’s open.’
And started reading again!
How very rude, she thought! Especially when she’d travelled all this way to see him! Fran crunched her way over to the front door, pushed it open and stepped inside, narrowing her eyes with surprise as she looked around.
It wasn’t what she had expected.
On the wooden floor lay mud-covered wellington boots, a gardening catalogue, a pair of secateurs and a battered old panama hat. Waterproof coats and jackets were heaped on the coat stand and a variety of different coloured umbrellas stood in an untidy stack behind the front door. The walls were deep and scarlet and womblike and welcoming.
So where were the wall-to-wall mirrors and the shaggy fur rugs where he made lots of love to lots of different women?
It felt like coming home, she thought, with an unwelcome jolt. And it shouldn’t, she told herself fiercely. This was the house of the man who was responsible for Rosie’s heartache—not the house of her dreams!
She turned and walked along a narrow corridor which led to the study and stood framed in the doorway with the light behind her.
He looked up, all unshaven and ruffled, as if he’d just got out of bed. Or hadn’t been to bed. ‘Hi,’ he said, and yawned. ‘You must be Fran Fisher.’
His eyes were the most incredible shade of deep blue, she noticed—night-dark and piercing and remarkable enough to eclipse even the rugged symmetry of his face. With the jeans went untidy, slightly too-long hair, making him more rock-star than literary agent.
Yes, Fran thought, her heart pounding like a mad thing. No wonder Rosie had fallen so badly. He looked exactly like a sex god! ‘And you must be Sam Lockhart,’ she gulped.
He shot a brief glance at his wristwatch and she found herself thinking that she had never seen a man so at ease in his own skin as this one.
‘Yeah,’ he drawled. ‘That’s me!’
‘Nice of you to come to the door and meet me!’
‘If you can’t manage to navigate your way from the front door to the study, then I think you’re in the wrong job, honey.’ He yawned again. ‘Come in and sit down.’
Fran gazed around the room. ‘Where?’
Sam conceded that she did have a point. Just about every available surface was given over to manuscripts of varying thicknesses. Some had even overflowed from his desk to form small paper towers on the Persian rug.
‘Don’t you ever clear up after you?’ she asked, before she had time to think about whether or not it was a wise question.
‘If you tidy manuscripts away, you lose them,’ he shrugged, as he rescued the telephone from underneath a shoal of papers. ‘At least if they’re staring you in the face you can’t hide away from the fact that you need to get around to reading them sometime!’
The blue eyes glanced rather absently around the study. ‘Though maybe it is a little cluttered in here. The sitting room is just along there.’ He pointed towards a low door at the far end of the room. ‘Why don’t you trot along and wait for me in there. Make yourself comfortable. I’m expecting a call any minute, but I shan’t be long.’
‘Please don’t rush on my account,’ she gritted, irritated at being told to trot along—as if she was some kind of pit-pony!
This drew a sardonic smile. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t.’
The first thing Fran decided when she walked into Sam Lockhart’s sitting room, was that there was no woman living in the house with him—or if there was, then she must be a very passive and insipid woman because the place had masculinity stamped indelibly all over it. Deep, bold colours and substantial furniture.
Fran was used to being in strangers’ houses; it was part of her job. She knew how much a home environment could tell you about a person, and over the years she had become an expert at reading the signs of domestic bliss.
Or turmoil.
The room had all the untidy informality of truly bachelor territory. For a start he seemed to be incapable of throwing away a single newspaper—since she could see Sunday supplements dating back from the previous month, and beyond. And there were enough books heaped on a low table and on the floor surrounding it for him to consider opening his own personal library! She crouched briefly to scan some of the titles and was alarmed to see that they shared some of the same taste in authors. Disturbing.
She rose to her feet and carried on looking. There were no photos scattered anywhere, but that didn’t really surprise her. Women were the ones who put photos in a room—reminders of great family occasions like engagements and weddings and christenings.
