Of course, it was pretty high up here, and if she hadn’t lingered to watch the trout in the mountain stream she wouldn’t have missed her bus, and there would have been no necessity for her to trudge down this seemingly endless road, although she distinctly remembered seeing a sign in the village on the way up announcing that it was merely a mile and a half to Inchmere House, the children’s home.
Gritting her teeth against the nagging pain from her torn muscles, she kept on walking. Pain was something she had grown used to living with. The doctors had prescribed various drugs, but she had refused them. Sometimes she thought the only thing that kept her going was her constant battle not to give in. She had been so full of hope this morning. The job would have provided her with a means of earning her living and a roof over her head, both important considerations, as since leaving the hospital she had been depleting her small savings on the rent of a shabby, chilly room in a Birmingham boarding house, and the necessities of day-to-day living.
She could have turned to her mother, but pride had prevented her; the same pride which had forced her to smile and look pleased when her mother announced her stepfather’s plans for retirement in Spain. In another two weeks they would be gone, and then she would be completely on her own.
Weak tears of self-pity welled in her eyes and she dashed them away angrily. It was pointless thinking about what was past; she could never have lived with her parents anyway, even if they had offered her a home. But she had to get a job; some means of earning money—any means of earning money!
Like an Eldorado the surgeon’s words lured her on; the memory of his advice that there was an operation which could restore her leg to full strength, the frail hope she had clung to in the weeks after Rob’s defection; weeks when she battled daily with a swamping sense of rejection and bitterness, telling herself that once restored to her old self she would show Rob what he had lost by deserting her when she needed him most! Her hands curled into her palms, bitterness etched in the magnificent tawny eyes which had given rise to her unusual name. Tiger eyes, Rob had lovingly called them, going on to whisper passionately that he loved them just as he loved everything about her. But no one would whisper words of love to her now! She shuddered suddenly with cold, the sleek length of her dark gold hair plastered to her neck by the damp air, her too thin body telling its own story of illness and neglect.
Rob. She closed her eyes momentarily, overwhelmed by weakness. How she longed for him at this moment—the warmth of his arms; the sweet tenderness of his kisses—a tenderness which had promised to ripen into passion, but time and circumstances had always been against them. Amber refused to have her first experience of total possession spoiled by being rushed or being conducted unromantically. Rob had laughed at her, but he hadn’t argued. They had been planning to go away together for a week’s holiday before the Saudi business came up, and she had bought, in anticipation of the holiday, brief wisps of underwear, and a soft, feminine nightdress that had been far too expensive, but irresistible.
Lost in the past, she didn’t hear the warning sound heralding the approach of a car, and her first intimation of its intrusion was the loud blaring of its horn.
Time rolled back and she was held fast, transfixed in the beam of powerful fog lights, frozen and unable to move, her face a pale, fearful oval caught in the powerful lights for a brief second before the car swerved across the road and up the banking, and the engine was suddenly cut.
The sudden cessation of sound broke through her wall of terror, and moving awkwardly, Amber stumbled to the side of the road. Behind her she heard a car door open, and brisk hard footsteps. Impelled by a fierce urgency to escape, she pressed on, almost running, her cry of pain as hard fingers grasped her shoulder swallowed up by the curling mist.
‘What the hell’s the matter with you? Why didn’t you move? Got a death wish, have you?’
The harsh male voice filled her senses, rasping against over-sensitised nerves. Her assailant was practically shaking her, her damp hair falling against her face, concealing it from him. With a sudden impatient movement he grasped it, pushing it away and forcing her face up.
‘My God!’ he breathed sardonically when he saw her too finely drawn features and the cheekbones made prominent by lack of nourishing food. ‘What a waif and stray it is! What were you trying to do? Seek oblivion under my car wheels?”
‘And if I was?’ Amber flared at him, suddenly too angry to bother denying his mocking comment.
‘Then you’re a fool,’ came the crisp retort. ‘Life is for living, little miss waif and stray, not for throwing away. That’s something you learn early up here amongst the mountains. Not local, are you?’ he asked, giving her unsuitable coat and city shoes a dry and cursory glance. ‘What are you doing up here? Hired one of the holiday cottages and had a tiff with the boy-friend?’
Amber’s chin tilted defiantly, and she longed for the mist to lift and the dark landscape to be illuminated so that she could let this insufferable stranger see the contempt in her eyes.
‘Nothing so juvenile. No man is worth killing oneself for.’
‘So what are you doing up here? Taking a quiet stroll?’
The sarcastic retort stung.
‘If you must know, I was looking for a job—at the children’s home.’
‘And because you didn’t get it you decided to fling yourself under my wheels. Bit drastic, wasn’t it?’
It was sheer exasperation that made her retort crossly, ‘Oh, don’t be so ridiculous! I wasn’t throwing myself under your wheels at all. If you must know I…’ She stopped abruptly, remembering how she had just stood frozen in the beam of his lights, and changed her tack, to say accusingly, ‘You shouldn’t have been driving so fast. You could have caused an accident. Drivers never think of pedestrians.’ A trace of bitterness crept unknowingly into her voice. ‘They don’t care what risks they take with other people’s lives, and when they do, they get away scot free…’
‘What are you implying? That I owe you compensation? You’ve been watching too much American television, lady, and you’ve got it wrong. The car has to actually touch you before you can claim.’
‘And even then you don’t always get anything,’ Amber said coolly, remembering her own inability to claim compensation from the driver who had injured her, despite the fact that he had been speeding, because he had not been properly insured.
She remembered that she was not wearing a watch, and that the last train for her connection left the village at eight-thirty. She had no idea what time it was now. She had left the home at seven and seemed to have been walking for hours.
‘Could you tell me the time, please?’ she asked quickly. ‘I have a train to catch.’
She saw the glint of gold on a lean male wrist clad in a dark jacket which seemed to be of a leather fabric, although because of his dark clothes, Amber could make out very little of her companion’s appearance apart from the fact that he was tall, with dark hair.
‘Just gone eight,’ he told her laconically.
Eight! She tried to fight down a sense of panic. She only had a few pounds in her purse. If she missed her connection she would have to wait until morning, which meant finding somewhere to stay.
‘Thank you. I must go…’ Without waiting to see his reaction she started to hurry down the road, for once not concerned with what the man watching her might think of her ungainly gait.
She heard
