Tall, Dark And Dangerous. Kate Proctor
when the man again began addressing her in French. ‘In fact, I am English,’ she waffled inanely. ‘Are you lost?’
It was a question inspired by naïve wishfulness and one, a sudden flash of intuitive pessimism warned her, with as much hope of receiving an affirmative answer as she had of flying to the moon.
‘No,’ he said, one delicately arched brow rising quizzically. ‘Why—are you?’
‘No, of course I’m not,’ exclaimed Ginny, only too aware of the flustered picture she was presenting. ‘It’s just that we don’t often come across strangers around here,’ she added half-heartedly.
‘That’s the whole idea of having a place like this,’ he murmured in that attractively drawly accent so like Libby’s. ‘You don’t often get pestered by trespassing strangers…So, tell me, who are you?’
‘I’m the gardener,’ stammered Ginny, too thrown by the question either to notice its innuendo or to query his right to be asking it. ‘The person who owns the place isn’t here at the moment.’
‘On the contrary,’ he said, giving her an unsettlingly ambivalent look before turning and lifting a couple of gleaming leather cases from the back of the car, ‘the person who owns it is right here before you.’
‘I…Who are you?’ croaked Ginny, her knees threatening to buckle beneath her—Libby had sworn her family always gave the company overseeing the estate at least a couple of weeks’ notice before arriving!
‘Michael Grant,’ he replied, a faint hint of amusement in the vivid blue of the eyes taking open stock of her obvious consternation. ‘And I can only assume you’re one of Libby’s many and varied friends,’ he added. For an instant, Ginny thought he was about to hold out a hand for her to shake; it rose, instead, to clutch theatrically at his head. ‘Sorry—I forgot—you’re the gardener.’
‘I’m also a friend of Libby’s,’ stated Ginny, acutely aware of the distaste behind his reference to Libby’s ‘many and varied friends’. He could hardly be expected to know that she held similar feelings towards that group of ruthless spongers who had once peopled Libby’s life, but who were now, mercifully, no longer part of it.
‘OK, so you’re a friend of Libby’s,’ he stated without interest, picking up his luggage and striding towards the creeper-clad villa. ’I’ve driven straight through from Paris, so you’ll forgive me if my only interest is in getting into a bath-tub and sluicing off the grime from the journey rather than socialising with you right now.’
Had she just driven five hundred miles or so, mused Ginny as she followed him into the house, she would have resembled a limp rag; yet there was barely a crease in the pale, immaculately tailored lightweight trousers of the man striding nonchalantly ahead of her, nor even in the dark silk shirt skimming with no trace of dampness the broad contours of his back.
She halted momentarily in her tracks, her exasperated intake of breath audible as she realised that it was the appalling problem of Michael Grant’s presence she should be dwelling on rather than his undeniable sartorial elegance.
‘Did you say something?’ he demanded, a look of irritation on his handsome features as he turned his head to her.
‘No,’ muttured Ginny, feeling hopelessly out of her depth. ‘But I was about to make tea—would you like some…or coffee, perhaps?’
‘Now, that’s original—the gardener offering me tea in my own place,’ he murmured, the scowl darkening. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a live-in gardener?’
‘But I am,’ protested Ginny, colour rushing mortifyingly to her cheeks. ‘I mean…I do…live here, that is. I do the housekeeping as well as the gardening.’
‘You don’t say,’ he drawled, his eyes narrowing in undisguised scrutiny. ‘And my niece—is she around?’
His niece, thought Ginny weakly, her mind scrabbling in vain to dredge up what it could on Libby’s tyrannical family. He could only be around thirty—surely too young to be an uncle?
‘She’s in Paris…she went to see some friends.’
‘I’m surprised she didn’t move them all down here with her,’ he stated, sarcasm oozing from his every word. ‘Or are you about to tell me she’s filled the place and is off visiting with the overspill?’
‘Only the two of us are staying here,’ replied Ginny, stung by the undisguised hostility of his tone, but feeling a reluctant understanding in the light of Libby’s chequered past. ‘And, to put your mind at rest, Libby no longer mixes with the sort of people she once did.’
‘So, you think my mind needs putting at rest, do you?’ He hesitated, frowning. ‘I don’t know your name.’
‘It’s Ginny—Ginny Price.’
‘And you’re telling me you’re not one of the usual free-loaders Libby has around her, is that it, Ginny?’
‘I most certainly am not a free-loader!’ she exclaimed with fiery indignation—now he was being downright rude.
‘Glad to hear it,’ he drawled, turning and continuing on into the house. ‘I’ll have the bedroom overlooking the cypress grove—if no one else is using it, that is.’
‘No one’s using it,’ snapped Ginny. ‘I’ll see to bedlinen for you. If you’d let us know you were coming, I could have had everything ready for you.’ As would any housekeeper-cum-gardener being paid the relative fortune she allegedly was, added Ginny silently to herself, her blood running cold at the mere thought.
‘I’m the kind of guy who prefers doing things on the spur of the moment,’ he retorted as be began climbing the wide, curving staircase. ‘Give me half an hour or so to get myself cleaned up,’ he added as he disappeared from view, ‘then I’ll gladly join you for tea.’
Ginny flew to the large, old-fashioned kitchen and flung herself down on one of the chairs at the huge, scrubbed wood table dominating it.
She had to get a grip on herself, think things through!
‘Libby, what have you got me into?’ she groaned softly, folding her arms against the table and lowering her head defeatedly on to them.
To most observers, the friendship that had sprung up between the rebellious American girl with a background of untold wealth, and the unnaturally subdued English girl without a penny to her name must have seemed one of the most unlikely imaginable.
‘The reason we’re over here is that my new stepmother is English—so my dad’s doing research at Trinity,’ the twelve-year-old Libby Collier had announced by way of introduction, on their first day at the small Cambridge secondary school at which Ginny would remain for the next four years and Libby for less than one.
‘Will you still be my friend when I’ve gone?’ Libby had later demanded, when their unlikely friendship had blossomed to a peculiarly mutual dependency.
‘Why would you go?’ Ginny had asked, devastated by even the thought of losing the one friend she had found in the barren new existence fate had imposed on her.
‘I know I won’t be here long,’ Libby had stated with prophetic despondency. ‘Jane’s my third stepmother, but she won’t last any longer than the others. In the academic world, my dad’s considered some sort of genius, but he’s just a birdbrain when it comes to personal relationships. He keeps saying my mom’s the only woman he’s ever truly loved…Why did she have to die?’ she had railed disconsolately.
‘At least you have your father!’ Ginny had rounded on her friend with a savagery born of her own stillgaping wounds. ‘Less than two years ago both my parents were killed in a car crash. That’s why I had to come here…and live with an aunt who hates me!’
She gave a weary shake of her head as she lifted it from her arms. It wasn’t strictly true to say that her aunt Irene hated her, she told herself