SHE was walking ahead of him through the orchard. No, drifting. He stopped dead in his tracks, brought up short by what he saw.
She must have heard his approach because, slender as a flexing wand, she slowly turned to face him, her small face so delicate and fey that he wondered if he was hallucinating. Tiny and graceful, she stood up to her ankles in a sea of buttercups and she looked as though she had just stepped out of a medieval illustration.
Not normally fanciful, he tried to understand why he’d had this impression. It could have been her long, close-fitting skirt flaring out from below the knee, or the long-sleeved soft cream top that hugged her slim figure like a second skin.
Or perhaps it was the hair that made her look like a modern day Guinevere. It was black and cascaded in thick waves down her lissom back from an imprisoning twist of…
He narrowed his eyes in surprise. She’d caught up her hair at the nape of her long neck with a rope of living greenery. Ivy, or something. Entwined with real flowers. Weird.
A hippie flower child, he decided, and scowled. Maybe from one of those boats. Spying out the land. Instinctively he fingered the scar on his forehead.
After the unpleasant experience of a burglary and two muggings—one of which had involved a woman who’d diverted his attention with a plausible sob story—he’d learnt to be suspicious where itinerant strangers were concerned. Even medieval hippies as tiny as this one.
In London you didn’t look strangers in the eye. Never wore an expensive watch. Walked quickly everywhere, locked your car while driving, kept the car revved at traffic lights and stayed alert at all times. That’s how you survived in the City.
‘You’re on my land!’ he growled, deliberately projecting menace.
Her placid expression didn’t alter. She remained very still and calm, as if waiting for him to approach. Much to his surprise, he did. Usually people came to him.
As he glowered his way towards her a small hand came out in a meek greeting.
‘I’m Catherine Leigh. How do you do?’
It was a sweet, gentle voice and before he knew it he had taken the dainty, fluttering fingers in his and was muttering less irritably, ‘Zach Talent.’
Had he noticed how nervous she was? Hastily she retracted her fingers from the firm, decisive grip and clasped them behind her back so that he didn’t see how badly they were shaking.
‘You…said this was your island,’ she began huskily, her face puzzled.
‘Apparently it is,’ he replied, his mouth clamping shut into a hard, exasperated line as if that fact didn’t please him one bit. His intimidating frown deepened and it seemed that his eyes glinted with shards of icy anger.
‘Oh!’
She considered this, deciding that she’d rather deal with the woman with egg-whisk hair and killer heels than this elegantly clad grouch. Then she brightened. The woman must be his wife. Better to wait and talk to her. ‘Are you on your own?’ asked the owner of the frown.
He turned to scan the undergrowth as if marauding bandits might leap out at any minute.
‘Yes. Just me,’ she replied quietly.
‘Hmm.’ He relaxed his guard a fraction. ‘So what are you doing here?’ he shot out.
‘I came to speak to your wife,’ Catherine told him with absolute truth.
‘Did you?’ He sounded unconvinced for some inexplicable reason.
She continued to gaze at him with a pleasant, noncommittal expression on her face and was relieved to see the deep line between his brows easing a little. She noticed a long scar on his forehead and wondered apprehensively how he’d acquired it.
‘Can I see her? Is she in?’
‘No.’
How to win friends and influence people, she thought drily. He really was the most surly of men!
‘Then I think I’ll come back later when she’s at home,’ she suggested gravely.
‘No, you don’t. Wait!’ The command was barked out just as she turned to go.
Caught off-guard as she whirled around, her wide-eyed look of utter surprise seemed to take him unawares too. For a split second she thought his steely eyes had softened to a misty grey.
Then she realised it must have been a trick of the light. When she looked again they were hard and shuttered with no hint of his feelings at all.
‘You’ll talk to me,’ he said sharply. ‘Let’s see if you can come up with a convincing excuse for being here.’
‘Of course I can!’ she replied in surprise, not allowing herself to be riled by his rudeness.
‘In that case, I’m not standing here knee-deep in muck,’ he exaggerated. ‘Come to the house.’
Without waiting for her response to this arrogant order, Zach Talent strode off down the path, his shiny leather shoes squelching in the mud.
Catherine hesitated and then, before she knew it, she was following. She felt almost as if she had been drawn by a magnet. And as she walked and marvelled at the man’s compelling authority she ruefully prepared to tug her forelock. A lot.
She heaved a sigh. Somehow she felt it wouldn’t help even if she tugged out handfuls of hair in the process.
Zach was clearly one of those suspicious types who imagined everyone was trying to pull a fast one. He’d looked at her as if she might be planning something evil.
From his manner, she reckoned that he also liked to be in control. He wasn’t the kind of man to do anyone a favour. For him, she suspected that it would be a matter of honour not to show any sign of weakness by granting concessions to any passing peasant.
Anxiously she studied his taut body as he strode rapidly along, rocketing out staccato orders to someone on his mobile phone as if every second and every word was precious and not to be wasted by adding pleasantries.
With gloom in her heart, she hurried after him through Edith’s—Zach’s!—beautiful wild-life garden. And she wondered how long it would be before Killer Heels and The Frown strimmed every blade of grass within an inch of its life and installed soulless carpet bedding. Perhaps even artificial turf and security lights. With a helipad.
She mourned for the island’s bleak future. Lifting her bowed head, she listened to the insistent warble of a blackcap, high on its perch in a lemon-scented azalea. It was joined by the unmistakable trill of a robin, singing its heart out from an oak tree.
Ring doves were cooing lovingly from the gnarled old mulberry tree and occasionally she heard a watery scuffle as a mallard drake enthusiastically courted a lady friend.
She and Zach were making their way through the rhododendron walk. Here, the peeling trunks arched over their heads like arms reaching out to embrace one another. In a few weeks the walk would be a blaze of colour.
The
