The #1 Bestsellers Collection 2011(127)

“I’ll only be a minute.”

“I’m coming in with you.”

“Really, it’s all right.”

“Don’t argue with me, Holly. You know you won’t win.”

Inside, the tiny house was no better. The fact she had to turn on the lights when it was only late morning spoke for itself. Naked bulbs in the ceiling fixtures cast stark light over meagre threadbare furniture. He tried not to curl his lip at the Formica-topped table and two vinyl-covered tubular steel-framed chairs standing askew on the cracked linoleum floor in the kitchen.

“Is this your furniture?” He couldn’t help but ask.

“No, I rent the place furnished. Take a seat, and I’ll get changed.”

Not that it was any of his business, but what on earth did she do with her money?

“Don’t I pay you enough?” The question dropped like a bomb in the room, and Holly halted in her tracks.

“You pay me very well.” She held herself tightly coiled, as if she was hiding something and was afraid he’d find it. It was a side of her he’d never seen before, and he didn’t like it.

“So what the hell do you do with it?” He swung out one arm, gesturing at the miserable conditions.

“Are you dissatisfied with the way I do my job?” Her voice was cold, yet vibrated with suppressed anger.

“Of course not. If I was, you’d know it.”

“I’m glad that’s settled, then. Because that’s where we begin and end. What I do with my money is my business.” With that she stalked from the room and into what he assumed was her bedroom. He could hear her moving about—slamming drawers, clattering coat hangers as if she had to vent her anger somehow.

She was right. He didn’t like it one bit, but he had no right to push. There were ways and means of getting to the bottom of this. Connor shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets and rocked on his heels, loath to sit on the sagging sofa positioned in front of the small television.

Through the paper-thin walls, the racket from the party down the street suddenly rose in volume and foul-mouthed jeers rang out through the air against the accompaniment of shattering glass bottles.

“Holly!” he shouted. “We need to go, now.”

She reappeared in the doorway. She’d changed into smart pale-grey trousers with matching heeled sandals and a hot-pink short-sleeved blouse that lent a soft glow to her skin and served to detract from the faint shadows under her eyes. Shadows he himself had put there.

Connor urged her down the hallway. He guarded her back impatiently as she took the time to double lock and dead bolt the front door. Probably a total waste of time, he observed cynically, given the fact that it had glass panes that could easily be broken. He ushered her into the front seat of his 5-series BMW and pulled away from the driveway, the slight squeal of his tires as he planted the accelerator eliciting several one-fingered salutes from the partying throng.

Why did she live there, he asked himself again. Were there financial problems that necessitated it? Or some vice perhaps? It occurred to him that he knew very little about her at all. But whatever secrets she was hiding, he would find them out.





Holly slammed her front door closed behind her and listened as the taxi sped away up the broken-glass-littered street. The day had been interminable. The polite smiles, the conjecture Connor’s family couldn’t quite hide from their eyes.

Certainly they’d been polite and friendly, his two brothers especially so. But all the while she felt as though she was being judged—and found wanting. Maybe they’d thought he’d bring someone more like Carla—social, outgoing and supremely confident.

She’d been a cuckoo in the nest. Again. The knowledge clutched like a fist around her heart. She should be used to that by now, yet the pain still had the power to bring her to her knees. Still, she was an old hand at hiding her pain deep inside, and that’s where the memories of the past twenty-four hours would be firmly lodged.

Leaving hadn’t been as difficult as she’d expected. In the end, she’d pleaded a headache to one of Connor’s brothers and asked that he make Holly’s apologies to everyone. For some stupid, foolish reason, she’d half expected to hear Connor come after her. Why, she didn’t really know, because he’d been strategically monopolised by his father’s other guests the whole time. He certainly hadn’t noticed when she’d slipped from the front portico of Tony Knight’s palatial Epsom home and into the waiting taxi she could ill afford.

Maybe he’d accepted that she didn’t really belong. Or maybe he’d simply had his fill of her and made his point, whatever that was, with his father. She didn’t know which hurt the most.