His Little Girl. Liz Fielding
took a step forward. She didn’t retreat, but stood her ground and stared him down. ‘I’ll take Sophie,’ he said, and saw the flash of concern that lit something deep in dark grey eyes that a moment before had been simply hostile. He struggled with guilt at what he was about to do. But Sophie was at the end of her tether, and he would do whatever it took to make his daughter safe.
‘Take her?’
‘You asked us to leave.’ He reached for the child. Sophie grumbled sleepily as he disturbed her, and the woman stepped back, holding the child protectively to her chest.
‘Where? Where will you go?’ she demanded.
He shrugged. ‘Maybe I’ll find a barn. Come on, sweetheart, we’ve disturbed this lady long enough.’
‘No—’ He managed to look puzzled. ‘You can’t take her back out there. She’s got a temperature.’
Bingo. ‘Has she?’ He put his hand on Sophie’s head and gave a resigned shrug. ‘Maybe you’re right. It’s been a tough few days.’ He put his hands lightly beneath the child’s arms, as if planning to take her. ‘But don’t worry. We’ll manage...somehow.’
She was torn. He saw the momentary struggle darken her eyes. She wanted him to go, but her conscience wouldn’t allow her to send Sophie out into the night. ‘You might. She won’t,’ she said, as her conscience won. ‘I thought you were going to warm her some milk?’
He glanced at the carton of milk standing on the cupboard, alongside a Sussex trug overflowing with an artfully casual arrangement of dried flowers. Beside it a couple of shabby waxed jackets hung from a Shaker peg rail. Very classy. The last time he had been at the cottage this had been little more than a scullery. Now it was an entrance lobby straight out of Homes and Gardens, quarry-tiled and expensively rustic.
He turned back to the young woman who, if he was clever enough, would any minute be urging him to stay. For the sake of the child. It was time to remind her that Richard was his friend. He replaced the torch on the hook behind the door, where he had found it—that at least had not changed since their fishing trips—and picked up the milk.
‘Yes, I was.’ He indicated the open cupboard in which rubber boots and outdoor shoes were stored instead of the pans he had been expecting. ‘In fact I was looking for a saucepan when I disturbed you. What happened to the kitchen? And when did Richard have electricity installed?’
‘That’s really none of your business,’ Dora replied curtly. But it did explain why he had been poking about the cupboards in the dark. It simply hadn’t occurred to him to look for a light switch. He might have been to the cottage before, but not in the last twelve months.
Not that she had been impressed with his claim that he knew Richard. Anybody around here would have known that this cottage belonged to Richard Marriott. And if he did know him, so what? He’d still broken in. ‘I didn’t catch your name,’ she said.
‘Gannon. John Gannon,’ he said, extending his hand formally, as if this was some cocktail party rather than a middle-of-the-night confrontation that should have him cringing with embarrassment.
She could see that he just wasn’t the cringing type. On the contrary, his gaze was wandering appreciatively from her tousled hair, over the loose silk wrap, lingering on pink-painted toenails peeping out from beneath the hem of her nightgown, before returning to her face. Then his face creased in a thoughtful frown. ‘Have we met somewhere before?’
There had been a lot of publicity when she’d returned from the Balkans; total strangers accosting her in the street, wanting to talk to her, newspapers wanting to write about the ‘Sloane’ who had given up the social whirl to drive aid trucks across Europe. If he remembered that he would be sure that he had fallen on his feet, sure that she was a soft touch.
It had been the need to get away from all that which had driven Dora down to the cottage in the first place, so, what with one thing and another, it seemed wiser not to jog his memory about where he might have seen her face before. And she ignored his hand, along with his invitation to introduce herself.
She wasn’t about to exchange civilities with a common criminal, particularly not one who had broken into her sister’s home. Even if he did have a velvet-soft voice, toffee-brown eyes and a deliciously cleft chin. After all the chin hadn’t been shaved in several days. And the toffee eyes were taking rather too much liberty with her under-dressed figure for her liking. With the child in her arms, she was unable to do anything about the wrap, but conscious that his gaze had become riveted to her pink toenails, she shuffled them out of sight.
‘That’s hardly an original pick-up line,’ she replied, with a crispness she was far from feeling.
‘No,’ he agreed, barely able to conceal his amusement, despite his exhaustion. This was one spirited lady. ‘I really must try harder.’
‘Don’t bother.’
‘Breaking and entering isn’t my usual line of business,’ he said, letting his hand fall to his side. He was still regarding her thoughtfully. ‘Who are you?’
Dora firmly resisted the temptation to ask him what his ‘usual line’ was. ‘Does it matter who I am?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose it does. But allow me to say that you’re a considerable improvement on Elizabeth. She would never have wasted time on anything quite so frivolous as painting her toenails.’
The man was outrageous. Not content with breaking into the cottage, he was flirting with her. Yet, despite her better judgement she was beginning to accept his familiarity with her brother-in-law’s personal life.
‘Elizabeth?’ she probed.
‘Elizabeth Marriott. Richard’s wife,’ he obliged. ‘A girl of very little imagination—a lack which was more than made up for by her greed, if the fact that she left him for a banker is anything to judge her by.’
‘A banker?’ He knew that he was being tested, Dora realised, but that didn’t stop her.
‘The kind that owns the bank,’ he obliged. ‘Not the kind who works behind the counter.’ And, having apparently awarded himself a pass grade, he made a broad gesture with the milk. ‘I never thought he’d sell this place, though.’
‘What makes you think he has?’
He looked about him. ‘This kind of thing isn’t his style.’
It was Dora’s turn to smile. ‘Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do.’
He gave her another thoughtful look, then shrugged. ‘Shall I heat the milk? Or will you, since everything’s been moved?’ Not that he had any intention of relieving the woman of her burden. While she was holding Sophie, she was vulnerable to persuasion.
‘The kitchen is through there,’ she said.
Gannon looked around. More warm earthy colours and glowing wood. ‘You’ve extended into the barn,’ he said, reaching for a copper pan and setting it on the hob. ‘Is it all like this now?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like something out of a lifestyle magazine.’
‘I don’t read lifestyle magazines, so I really couldn’t say.’ Dora certainly had no intention of getting into a cosy chat about interior decoration with a common burglar. No, she corrected herself, the man was far too at ease with himself and his surroundings to be described as a common burglar. She glared at him, but he wasn’t in the least bit put out. If anything, she was the one hard pressed to keep up the challenge so she shifted her gaze, glancing down at the child. ‘Did you say her name was Sophie?’ she enquired. ‘Is she your daughter?’
‘Yes.’ He turned away from her to open the milk and pour some into the pan. ‘And yes,’ he said.
‘Did you know she has a temperature?’ Dora pressed.
‘You