She noticed that he barely looked at her for the duration of the drive, which covered a honeycomb of unrecognizable streets and alleys to emerge finally in a long, narrow road which was erratically lit and sported a selection of women lurking in the shadows.
Against the walls, in doorways. Singly or else in twos and threes.
Ruth's heart dropped. This was very different from what she had encountered the night before. There was something gritty and depressing and scary about this scene. She drew the jacket a bit tighter around her. "This'll do," Franco said, staring impassively out of the window. "Okay?" he asked in a low voice, when they were out of the taxi, and she gulped and nodded. "Don't look so terrified." He walked up to a twosome, who smiled invitingly and told him they were available for some action, whatever he wanted, to which he replied that they were looking for a woman by the name of Mattie.
The process was repeated over and over, until they finally hit jackpot. They were pointed to a building which resembled a warehouse primed for demolition and were told to wait a few minutes because she was with a client.
"How do you know she'll see us?" Ruth whispered, squinting at the black doorway. Ever so often a car would cruise by very slowly. Sometimes there was the sound of doors being opened and closed then the swish of tires as the car slipped away. Ruth heard it all like background noise but she couldn't bring herself to look around.
"We don't. In which case we'll just have to try our luck with some of the others. But I think she'll see us.
I was given her name by a guy called Robbie, well-known veteran reporter who mostly sits behind the desk now, but years ago he helped her with some police aggro and she's always been grateful to him for that. Now and then they even meet up for a drink. He takes her out for the occasional meal at Christmas time, says that it makes her feel like a worthwhile human being."
They waited in silence. Ruth had become so accustomed to the slow purr of cars breaking the ominous hush of the dark street that she barely noticed when a car stopped and a man rolled down his window and asked. "How much, love? When you're through with the next one?"
CHAPTER FOUR
"Are you sure you're all right? perhaps we ought to go to the doctor..." It was the fourth time in the space of half an hour that Ruth had asked the question, but as she gazed anxious at the bruised fist resting on his thigh she felt the same mixture of shocked dismay and guilt. "This is all my fault, isn't it?" she said miserably, thinking aloud rather than posing a question.
"If hadn't donned this..." she glanced down at herself with scathing disgust "...ridiculous garb, none of this would have happened." She ran a finger gently along the scraped knuckle and winced on his behalf. "Is it very awful?"
"Nothing that I can't handle," Franco informed her stoically. It had taken ten minutes of solid walking and frantic searching before they had managed to find a taxi, during which time he had been pleasantly warmed by her charming show of concern for his welfare.
Whom did it hurt if he had exaggerated a minor scrape into something worryingly more painful?
"I should never have worn this stupid outfit," Ruth repeated, hunkering down into her jacket as though endeavoring to bury her way through it and vanish completely.
"Will you stop saying that!"
"How can I? I shudder to think what kind of sight I made if that man...that foul, disgusting, revolting man thought that I was...available for sale." She made a choking, disgusted sound under her breath and gazed at her co-passenger in the car with stormy grey eyes.
"I have never attracted that sort of attention in my life before!" She sounded as horrified as she felt. Her pale blonde hair caught the passing lights and, when it did, shimmered like spun gold. She flicked the spun gold carelessly behind her shoulders and then irritably stuffed it into the back of her jacket.
"You can't be that unfamiliar with attention from the opposite sex," Franco said heavily
"How much further is it to your house? I did a first aid course when I was at school. I should be able to patch you up in no time at all."
"Forget the hand," he answered irritably, not caring for the fact that his usually captivating personality was in competition with a mildly swollen bone on his right hand. "You haven't answered my question."
"What question?" She looked up from her frowning inspection of his hand and favored him with a long, beautifully guileless grey stare.
"I said," Franco repeated, hanging onto his patience, "you must be quite accustomed to attracting male attention."
He moved his fist from his left thigh to his right, just in case she avoided taking the conversational path he wanted by becoming sidetracked by his now virtually pain-free knuckle. That way, if she was so damned interested in inspecting the offending part of his body, she would have to lean over him which, regretfully, he doubted she would do.
"Well, I haven't got a boyfriend at the moment..."
In the darkness of the taxi he could glimpse the faint blush that swept into her cheeks. "I believe you asked me that question already," she said, making him feel uncomfortably like a bore.
"Actually, I wasn't asking you about whether or not you're involved," he said, with the bewildering feeling that he had been walking down a straightforward street that had suddenly revealed itself to be a honeycomb of back alleys and side paths. "I was merely remarking that a girl like you must be accustomed to men staring at her."
"A girl like me? What kind of girl would that be?"
Her voice had become frosty with disapproval.
"I'm not implying that you're any kind of girl or at least not the kind of girl that you're implying...I'm implying...God." He raked his good hand through his hair; "You're making me tongue-tied!" He automatically grinned a sexy, rueful grin, but its impact was lost as she was staring fixedly through the car window.
"Where did you say you lived? I don't recognize this area at all." She felt a slight tremor of nerves and wondered whether it had been such a clever idea to offer to help him. He could just have easily have cleaned himself up, but why would he do that when she had rushed in with her exclamations of horror and sympathy and her saint-like insistence that he take her immediately to the nearest first aid kit? Which, he had returned with alacrity, was in the bathroom cabinet of his house.
If she had been thinking with her head and on her feet, Instead of with her soft, emotional heart, she would have briskly sent him on his way and headed home to recover from her ordeal.
But guilt had stopped her. She had unwittingly provoked an inappropriate response from a kerb-crawler and Franco had been swift in dealing with the situation.
No attempt at an explanation had been made. No sooner had the words left the driver's mouth than he had been yanked unceremoniously from his car, punched even more unceremoniously in his jaw and then flung back into the offending vehicle with a string of abuse, the memory of which was enough to make her go red.
Was it any wonder, she thought now, fighting down her ridiculous surge of nervous tension, that she had felt guilty about the whole thing?
"Chelsea. Just off the King's Road as a matter of fact. You must have been there since you arrived in London..."
"Oh, yes," Ruth said vaguely. "I did go shopping there a couple of times, but it was a bit pricey for my liking. The last time my mum came down for a couple of days I took her there, but she spent most of the time telling me that she couldn't imagine what section of the human population some of these garments in those strange little shops catered for.
A look of mischievous amusement crossed Ruth's face. "She can be a little old-fashioned. Poor dear." She looked with mock gravity at Franco's rapt face. "She has led a rather sheltered life, you know, what with being married to a vicar... Thank goodness she has me to snap her out of it!"