Penny Jordan Collection(25)

                The woman he loved.

                She bit her lip as Ran started to walk away from her. Once he had gone she stared out of the bedroom window. It overlooked the formal gardens to one side of the house. Like the house, they had an air of neglect; of being unloved. Sylvie’s vivid imagination soon filled the neglected borders with lush herbaceous plants and restored the overgrown rose garden to what must have been a haven of peace and perfume.

                The air in the bedroom felt stale, but when she tried to open one of the sash windows all she managed to do was to break one of her nails. Cursing herself under her breath, she winced as the pain inside her head increased. Perhaps she had been rash in refusing Ran’s offer of some headache tablets.

                Quickly she opened the bedroom door and hurried back down the stairs.

                She found Ran in a huge ill equipped kitchen at the back of the house. As she pushed open the door he was heading towards it carrying a tray of tea.

                ‘Who’s that for?’ Sylvie demanded suspiciously.

                ‘You,’ Ran told her promptly. On the tray Sylvie could see a small packet of a familiar brand of headache tablets. The temptation to tell him that she didn’t want either his tea or his tablets was so strong that she had to fight hard to ignore it. Where on earth had such perversity come from—and when she had come downstairs especially to ask him for them?

                ‘I can manage it for myself,’ she told him ungraciously, and she held out her hands for the tray. The look he gave her made her flush but doggedly she stood her ground. Even so, she doubted that he would have handed the tray over to her if the telephone in the hallway had not rung.

                As he went to answer it Sylvie headed for the stairs.

                ‘Vicky...’ she heard him saying warmly, and then, ‘Yes...it’s still on... I’m looking forward to it too,’ he confirmed, his voice dropping and deepening. ‘Look, I have to go...’

                Sylvie was halfway up the stairs when she heard him replacing the telephone receiver.

                ‘Sylvie—’ he began.

                But she cut him short, turning round and telling him crisply, ‘Don’t let me delay you if you’ve got a date, Ran. I’ve got plenty of work to read up on.’

                ‘You need to sleep off your headache,’ Ran told her curtly.

                ‘On the contrary. I need to work,’ Sylvie corrected him sharply as she continued on her way upstairs.

                Ran stood and watched her. God, but she got under his skin. Why did he let her? Why hadn’t he simply told her that the only date he had this evening was with a damaged fence?

                Angrily he turned on his heel and strode towards the front door.

                As he closed it behind him Sylvie’s body slumped slightly; tension had invaded each and every one of her muscles and it wasn’t just her head that pounded with stress now, it was her whole body. Wearily she made her way to her bedroom, took two of the tablets, drank her tea and then, having removed her outer clothes, crawled into bed in her underwear. It was only when she was on the verge of sleep that she remembered that she had neglected to ask Ran to do something about the window she had been unable to open.





                                      CHAPTER FOUR

                RAN grimaced as he studied the very obviously cut-through pieces of fencing wire. No accident, that. Someone had quite definitely used wire cutters on them, which meant...