For His Eyes Only(19)

                ‘Of me?’ He took another step down. She swallowed, but this time stood her ground.

                ‘Of the horse. It was in the Racing Times. Photographs of you are scarce. You don’t even have a website.’ She made it sound like an accusation.

                ‘I seem to manage.’

                ‘Yes...’

                She turned away, giving them both a break as she looked around at the dozens of photographs taken from every angle of the horse—galloping, jumping, standing—that he’d pinned to the walls. She paused briefly at the anatomical drawings of the skeleton, the muscles, the blood vessels and then looked up at his interpretation of the animal gathered to leap a jump.

                ‘If I’d known who you were when the house came on the market,’ she said at last, ‘I could have used the information to get some editorial interest. Racehorse owners are among the richest men in the world and Hadley Chase is close to one of the country’s major racehorse training centres.’

                ‘You managed an excessive number of column inches without any help from me,’ he said, ‘but that’s who, not where,’ he said, refusing to be sidetracked.

                A rueful smile made it to a mouth that was a little too big for beauty, tugging it upwards. ‘The where was more difficult. And the address was only half the story. If it hadn’t been for Patsy I’d still be looking for you.’

                ‘So?’ he insisted.

                ‘I’m sorry, Mr Hadley. An estate agent never reveals her sources.’

                ‘A journalist?’ No, the piece in the newspaper had not been kind. Reading between the lines, anyone would be forgiven for assuming her ‘collapse’ had been the result of a coke-fuelled drive for success. Something in her past... Journalists would not be flavour of the month. ‘An art dealer?’ he suggested. Who would be vulnerable to those big blue eyes and a loose top button? No... Who had moved recently? ‘Freddie Glover threw a house-warming party a few months back,’ he said.

                She neither confirmed nor denied it and, satisfied, he let it rest.

                ‘If you’ve come to apologise...’ She seemed bright enough so he left her to fill in the blank.

                ‘I was sure Miles would have performed the ritual grovel but I could go through the motions if you insist,’ she offered.

                A little movement of her hand, underlining the offer, sent a barely discernible shimmer through her body—a shimmer that found an answering echo deep in his groin. Yes...

                She waited briefly, but he was too busy catching his own breath to answer.

                ‘I’m sorry about what happened, obviously, but that’s not the reason I’m here.’

                ‘Why are you here?’ he demanded. He hated being this out of control around a woman. Could not make himself send her away. ‘For heaven’s sake, come in and close the door if you’re staying. I won’t eat you...’

                She didn’t look entirely convinced, but she closed the door, took a breath and then walked towards him with the kind of mesmerisingly slow, hip-swaying walk that had gone out of style fifty years ago. Around the same time as her hourglass figure.

                No longer backlit from the street, the light pouring in from the skylights overhead lit her up like a spotlight and he could see that she’d made an attempt to disguise its lushness beneath a neat grey suit. Or maybe not. The skirt clung to her thighs and stopped a hand’s breadth short of serious, leaving a yard of leg on display, always supposing he’d got past the deep vee of her shirt. She really should try a size larger if she was serious.