about to accuse you of being a criminal.’ Rose blinked and cleared her throat. ‘Although, of course,’ she added grudgingly, ‘I might have got round to that sooner or later. You can’t be too careful. You should roll your window down. It’ll be a furnace in here otherwise.’
‘No air conditioning?’
‘This relic barely goes,’ she said affectionately before swinging around to expertly manoeuvre the courtyard which was strewn with cars, all parked, it would seem, with reckless abandon. ‘If I tried to stick air conditioning in it would probably collapse from the shock of being dragged into the twentieth century.’
‘You could always get a new car.’
‘For someone who dabbles in a bit of this and that, you seem to think that money grows on trees,’ she said tartly. ‘If I ever win the lottery I might consider replacing my car but, until then, I work with the old girl and hope for the best.’
‘Lawyers,’ he said with a vague wave of his hand. ‘Aren’t you all made of money?’
Rose laughed and shot him a sideways look. He was slouched against the passenger door, his big body angled so that he could look at her, and she wondered how many women had had those sexy dark eyes focused on them, how many had lost their head drowning in the depths.
She fancied herself as anything but the romantic sort, but there was a little voice playing in her head, warning her that this was a man she should be careful of.
Rose nearly laughed because her last brush with romance had left a nasty taste in her mouth. Jack Shaw had been a fellow lawyer and she had met him on one of her cases, which had taken her to Surrey and the playground of the rich and famous. He had been fighting the corner for the little guy and she had really thought that they were on the same wavelength—and they should have been. He’d ticked all the right boxes! But for the second time in her adult life she had embarked on a relationship that had started off with promise only to end in disappointment. How was it possible for something that made sense to end up with two people not actually having anything left to say to one another after ten months?
Rose knew what worked and what didn’t when it came to emotions. She had learned from bitter childhood experience what to avoid. She knew what was unsuitable. And yet her two suitable boyfriends, with their excellent socialist credentials, had crashed and burned.
At this rate, she was ready to give up the whole finding love game and sink her energies into worthwhile causes instead.
‘Not all lawyers are rich,’ she said without looking at him, busy focusing on the road, which was lined with dense hedges, winding and very narrow. ‘I’m not.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Maybe I chose the wrong branch of law.’ She shrugged. ‘Employment law generally doesn’t do it when it comes to earning vast sums of money. Not that I’m complaining. I get by nicely, especially when you think about all the perfectly smart people who can’t find work.’
‘There’s always work available for perfectly smart people.’
‘Is that your experience?’ She flashed him a wry sidelong glance before turning her attention back to the road. ‘Are you one of those perfectly smart people who finds it so easy to get work that you’re currently drifting out here to join a cause in which you have no personal interest?’
‘You’re still suspicious of my motives?’
‘I’m reserving judgement. Although—’ she sighed ‘—I can, of course, understand how easy it is to get involved if you’re a nature-lover. Look around you at the open land. You can really breathe out here. The thought of it being handed over to a developer, so that houses can be put up and the trees chopped down, doesn’t bear thinking about.’
* * *
Art looked around him. There certainly was a great deal of open land. It stretched all around them, relentless and monotonous, acres upon acres upon acres of never-ending sameness. He’d never been much of a country man. He liked the frenetic buzz of city life, the feeling of being surrounded by activity. He made some appreciative noises under his breath and narrowed his eyes against the glare as the perimeters of his land took shape.
‘So you’ve lived here all your life,’ Art murmured as she slowed right down to access the bumpy track that followed the outer reaches of his property. ‘I’m taking it that some of the guys protesting are relatives? Brothers? Sisters? Cousins? Maybe your parents?’
‘No,’ Rose said shortly.
Art pricked up his ears, detecting something behind that abrupt response. It paid to know your quarry and Harold had been spot on when he’d said that there was next to no personal information circulating out there about the prickly woman next to him. Amazing. Social media was the staple diet of most people under the age of thirty-five and yet this woman had obviously managed to turn her back firmly on the trend.
Since he was similarly private about his life, he had to concede some reluctant admiration for her stance.
‘No extended family?’
‘Why the Spanish Inquisition?’ She glanced across at him. ‘What about you? Brothers? Sisters? Cousins? Will some of your extended family be showing up here to support us?’
‘You’re very prickly.’
‘I...don’t mean to be, Mr Frank.’
‘I think we should move onto a first name basis. That okay with you? My name’s Arturo. Arthur if you prefer the English equivalent.’ Which was as close to the truth as it was possible to get, as was the surname, which hadn’t been plucked from thin air but which was, in fact, his mother’s maiden name.
‘Rose.’
‘And you were telling me that you weren’t prickly...’
* * *
‘I’m afraid the whole business of an extended family is something of a sore point with me.’ She half smiled because her history was no deep, dark secret, at least locally. If Arthur, or Arturo because he looked a lot more like an exotic Arturo than a boring Arthur, ended up here for the long haul, then sooner or later he would hear the gossip. The truth was that her background had made her what she was, for which she was very glad, but it wasn’t exactly normal and for some reason explaining herself to this man felt...awkward and a little intimate.
Aside from that, what was with the questioning? Shouldn’t he be asking questions about the land instead of about her?
On a number of levels he certainly didn’t respond in the predicted manner and again Rose felt that shiver, the faintly thrilling feathery sensation of being in slightly unchartered territory.
‘You asked about me,’ he said smoothly, filling the silence which had descended between them, ‘and extended family is a sore point for me, as well. I have none.’
‘No?’ They had arrived at the protest site but Rose found that she wanted to prolong the conversation.
‘Do you feel sorry for me?’ Arturo grinned and Rose blinked, disconcerted by the stupendous charm behind that crooked smile. She felt it again, a whoosh that swept through her, making her breath quicken and her stomach
