ten days ago had been devastating, but not exactly unexpected.
So now, at twenty-six, Dora was at last free to pursue her own aborted plans. But after all this time she felt it was too late. She had the house, and this shop, and had every intention of making something of her life. Despite Griffin Sinclair’s derision!
He really was the most incredible man. It seemed he abided by none of the conventions that most other people lived by. His remarks concerning her father’s death, for example, had been disgraceful.
Oh, Dora accepted there had been no love lost between the two men, her father considering the younger man to be a Bohemian reprobate while Griffin had believed her father to be—what had he called him earlier?—ruthless, conniving and manipulative.
Dora didn’t completely agree with either of those opinions, but she had been left in no doubt that the two men disliked each other intensely.
And as for Griffin’s reference to ‘Izzy’…! That wasn’t just something they had agreed never to talk about; it was something she preferred not to even think about, either!
‘What sort of ‘‘plans’’?’ Griffin was watching her with narrowed eyes. ‘Don’t tell me you’re actually going to drag this place into the twentieth century?’
He could mock all he liked, but her plans were her business, and she wasn’t about to discuss them with him. Griffin was the last person she would tell her plans to!
‘I know this is difficult for you to believe, Griffin,’ she told him tauntingly, ‘but not everyone wants to travel the world, calling no place home, living out of a suitcase—by the way, what could possibly be important enough to have brought you home this time?’ she added pointedly.
His mouth had tightened grimly at her deliberate barbs. And, in truth, she wasn’t being exactly fair. The last she had heard of Griffin he’d had an apartment in London he called ‘home’, and when he ‘lived out of a suitcase’ it was usually in first-class hotels. And as for ‘travelling the world’, that was Griffin’s job; the travel books he wrote after making those trips were highly successful, being amusing as well as informative.
Not that there was a copy of any of those books in this shop. Her father had considered Griffin’s writing to be too light and frivolous to be taken seriously, let alone take up any space on his shelves! Once Dora had picked up a copy of one of his books at a hotel she’d stayed in on a business trip for her father. She’d found that Griffin’s personality came through in every word; concise, humorous, derisive, but with warmth and charm also apparent if he had particularly liked the place he was writing about.
‘Family crisis,’ he abruptly answered her mocking question. ‘Which brings me to— Aha,’ he murmured softly as the bell pealed over the door as it was opened once again. ‘I’ll browse through the books and try to look like another customer,’ he told Dora conspiratorially. ‘That way it will look as if you have a rush on!’
Dora had trouble keeping her face straight as that was exactly what he proceeded to do. The woman who’d entered the shop, probably aged somewhere in her sixties, glanced across at Griffin as he began to amass a pile of books in his arms. Books, Dora was sure, that he chose from the shelves at random, and was convinced of the fact when she saw him put a copy of a book about the Titanic on the pile.
The elderly lady’s own attention seemed to be only half on the row of books she was perusing too, her glances in Griffin’s direction becoming more and more frequent as the minutes ticked by. Griffin pointedly ignored her glances, his attention seeming enrapt now on a shelf of books on prehistoric animals!
It was almost Dora’s undoing when he glanced across at her sideways, waited until the other woman wasn’t looking at him, and gave Dora a knowing wink!
She gave him a reproving frown. Dreadful man! His irreverence—in any situation—was unbelievable!
‘I say, miss.’ the elderly lady had now sidled up to her, talking to her in a whisper. ‘That young man over there.’ She nodded in Griffin’s direction.
‘Young man’? At age thirty-four, Griffin hardly fitted that description! But with a definite lack of any other young men in the vicinity…
‘Yes?’ Dora prompted attentively.
‘He looks very like Griffin Sinclair,’ she told Dora avidly. ‘You know, the man who does those travel programmes on the television,’ she prompted at Dora’s blank look. ‘Do you suppose it could be him?’ she added excitedly, looking quite youthfully flushed at the idea it just might be Griffin Sinclair.
As Dora knew only too well, it definitely was him. But it was the first she had heard of him being involved in a television programme. Not that that was exactly surprising; they didn’t possess a television at home for her to have seen him on. Her father had never liked that form of entertainment, and preferred to listen to the radio if he bothered with anything at all. Or rather—he had…
‘Why don’t you go and ask him?’ Dora suggested lightly, looking across at Griffin with new eyes.
He would be good on television, Dora thought to herself. He had the looks and presence to carry off such a role. And if this elderly lady’s reaction to him was anything to go by, he obviously had quite a female following of the programme, at least!
‘Do you think I should?’ The woman gave another nervous but also coy look in Griffin’s direction.
Dora definitely thought that she should—if only so that she could witness his reaction to the obvious admiration this woman had for him.
‘I’m sure you should,’ she encouraged lightly.
‘You don’t think he would be offended by a perfect stranger going up and talking to him in that way?’ The woman looked quite concerned that he might be.
‘How could he possibly be offended when you are obviously an admirer of his television programmes?’ Dora was beginning to feel sorry for the woman now, and regretted her subterfuge in not owning up to being completely aware of Griffin’s identity—if not the television programmes the woman was talking about.
‘But if it isn’t him—’
‘I’m sure that it is.’ Dora put a reassuring hand on the other woman’s arm. ‘Besides,’ she added mischievously, ‘I doubt that any man could look that much like him and not actually be him!’ As she knew only too well herself, Griffin was a one-off, if only in his unorthodox ways.
The woman looked across at him with adoring eyes. ‘He is rather unique, isn’t he?’ she sighed wistfully.
‘Unique’ described Griffin completely—at least, Dora had never met anyone remotely like him, either in looks or outspoken manner.
‘Exactly,’ she agreed with the other woman emphatically.
‘I suppose you think I’m rather silly; I know that my husband does,’ the elderly woman acknowledged ruefully. ‘But the truth of the matter is, I absolutely adore novels that have swashbuckling pirates and rogues in, and Griffin Sinclair looks just like a modern-day version of one to me!’
Dora glanced across at him. The pile of books that he carried reached up to his cleanly shaven chin—she really wasn’t that desperate to make a sale! But with his long blond hair, that ruggedly
