Was he imagining them?
He couldn’t remember looking at her legs and yet he’d drawn her shoes—black suede, dangerously high heels, a sexy little ankle strap...
He did not fight it, but drew obsessively, continuously, as if by putting her on paper he could clear his mind, rid himself of what had happened in that moment when he’d stood up and turned to face her. When he’d looked back, knowing that she’d be there at the window. Wishing he’d taken her with him when he’d left. When he’d hovered for a dangerous moment on the point of turning back...
Wouldn’t Morgan have loved that?
He stopped drawing and just let his mind’s eye see her, imagining how he’d paint her, sculpt her and when, finally, he looked up, he’d gone way past his stop.
* * *
Tash sat back in the cab as the driver pulled away from the kerb, did a U-turn and joined the queue of traffic backed up along the King’s Road.
A little more than twenty minutes—just long enough to get a parking ticket—that was all it had taken to reduce her from top-selling negotiator at one of the most prestigious estate agencies in London, to unemployable.
* * *
‘It’s a beautiful house, Darius.’ Patsy, having dropped off some paperwork and made them both a cup of tea, had discovered the Chronicle in the waste bin when she’d discarded the teabags. ‘Lots of room. You could make a studio in one of the buildings,’ she said with a head jerk that took in the concrete walls and floor still stained with oil from its previous incarnation as a motor repair shop. ‘Why don’t you just move in? Ask me nicely and I might even come and keep house for you.’
‘You and whose army?’ He glanced at the photograph of the sprawling house, its Tudor core having been added to over the centuries by ancestors with varying degrees of taste. At least someone had done their job right, taking time to find the perfect spot to show the Chase at its best. The half-timbering, a mass of roses hiding a multitude of sins. A little to the right of a cedar tree that had been planted to commemorate the coronation of Queen Victoria.
The perfect spot at the perfect time on the perfect day when a golden mist rising from the river had lent the place an ethereal quality that took him back to school holidays and early-morning fishing trips with his grandfather. Took him back to an enchanted world seen through the innocent eyes of a child.
‘It’s got at least twenty rooms,’ he said, returning to the armature on which he was building his interpretation of a racehorse flying over a fence. ‘That’s not including the kitchen, scullery, pantries and the freezing attics where the poor sods who kept the place running in the old days were housed.’ Plus half a dozen cottages, at present occupied by former employees of the estate whom he could never evict, and a boat house that was well past its best twenty years ago.
She put the magazine on his workbench where he could see it, opened a packet of biscuits and, when he shook his head, helped herself to one. ‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Wring that wretched girl’s neck?’ he offered, and tried not to think about his hand curled around her nape. How her skin would feel against his palm, the scent of vanilla that he couldn’t lose... ‘Subject closed.’
He picked up the Chronicle and tossed it back in the bin.
‘It said in the paper that she’d had some kind of a breakdown,’ Patsy protested.
A widow, she worked as a freelance ‘Girl Friday’ for several local businesses, fitting them in around the needs of her ten-year-old son. She kept his books and his paperwork in order, the fridge stocked with fresh milk, cold beer, and his life organised. The downside was that, like an old time travelling minstrel, she delivered neighbourhood gossip, adding to the story with each stop she made. He had no doubt that Hadley Chase had featured heavily in her story arc this week and her audience were no doubt eagerly awaiting the next instalment.