The Disobedient Mistress. LYNNE GRAHAM
consider the potential costs of such a role, Misty compressed her lips hard. ‘May I leave now?’
Leone flicked her a considering glance. ‘Yes. I’ll see you at my hotel tonight at nine and we’ll get the remaining details ironed out. I’m staying at the Belstone House hotel—’
‘Tonight doesn’t suit me,’ Misty said facetiously, unable to resist the temptation.
‘Make it suit,’ he advised. ‘I’m returning to London tomorrow.’
With a rigid little nod of grudging agreement, Misty walked back out again, her slender spine ramrod straight. But she was even more angry with herself than she was with him. How could she have lost herself like that in his arms? But then she had never felt like that before with a man, no, not even with Philip in the first fine flush of love. She paled, suppressing that unfortunate thought. What she had felt at nineteen was hard to recall three years on. Leone Andracchi had caught her off guard. Self-evidently, he possessed great technique in the kissing department, but why hadn’t her loathing for the man triumphed?
Colouring and confused by what she could not explain to her own satisfaction, Misty climbed into the van in Brewsters’ car park and drove to the premises she rented on the outskirts of town. There she joined her three staff in the clean-up operation that concluded every working day. It was after five by the time she locked up and all she could think about was how her business had become so vulnerable that one lost contract could finish it off.
Carlton Catering was just over a year old. She had started out small, doing private dinner parties and the occasional wedding. Nothing too fancy, nothing too big and her overheads had been low. But when, five months ago, her supplier had mentioned that there was a tender coming out for providing lunches at Brewsters, the biggest, swankiest company on the industrial estate, she had been eager to put in a bid and expand. On the strength of that trial contract, she had borrowed to buy another van and upgrade her equipment.
However, disaster had struck soon afterwards. Her premises had been vandalised and the damage had been extensive but her insurance company had refused to pay out, arguing that her security precautions had been inadequate. That had been a bitter and unexpected blow, for the repairs had wiped out her cash reserve and from that point on she had been struggling to stay afloat.
‘Your need to reduce your personal expenditure to offset that loss,’ her bank manager had warned her only six weeks earlier. ‘In spite of your cash-flow problems, you’re continuing to pay the mortgage on a house that doesn’t belong to you. I respect your generosity towards Mrs Pearce, but you must be realistic about the extent of the drain on your own resources.’
But sometimes being realistic utterly failed to take account of circumstances and emotional ties like love and loyalty, Misty reflected painfully as she drove home. Birdie Pearce lived in a rambling old country house called Fossetts, which had belonged to her late husband Robin’s family for generations. Unable to have children of their own, Robin and Birdie had chosen to become foster parents instead. For over thirty years the kindly couple had opened their home and devoted their lives to helping countless difficult and disturbed children.
Misty had been one of those foster kids and she too had been unhappy, bitter and distrustful when she had first gone to Fossetts. She had been twelve years old, hiding behind a tough front of not caring where she lived or who looked after her, but Birdie and Robin had worked hard to gain her trust and affection. They had transformed her life by giving her security and having faith in her, and that was a debt she knew that she could never repay but, above all, it was a loving debt, not a burden.
For the past fourteen months, a fair proportion of Misty’s earnings had gone towards ensuring that Birdie could remain in her own home. Not that Birdie knew that even yet, for her husband had once managed their finances and Misty had taken over that task after the older man’s death. Misty had been shocked to discover that Fossetts was mortgaged to the hilt. When Robin’s investments had failed and money had become tight, he had borrowed on the house without mentioning the matter to anyone.
Now over seventy, Birdie had a bad heart and she was on the waiting list for the surgery that would hopefully ensure that she lived well into old age. But in the short term, without that surgery, Birdie was very vulnerable and her consultant had emphasised how important it was that Birdie should enjoy a stress-free existence. Birdie loved her home and it was also her last link with Robin, whom she had adored. From the outset, Misty’s objective had been to protect the older woman from the financial worry that might bring on another heart attack. But even Misty had not appreciated just how much it would cost to keep Fossetts running for Birdie’s sake.
It was a tall, rather Gothic house with a steep pitched roof and quaint attic windows. Built in the nineteen twenties, it sat in a grove of stately beech trees fronted by a rough meadow. Parking the van, Misty suppressed a troubled sigh. Fossetts was beginning to look neglected. The grounds no longer rejoiced in a gardener. The windows needed to be replaced and the walls were crying out for fresh paint. Although it was far from being a mansion, it was still too big a house to be maintained on a shoestring.
Yet the minute Misty stepped into the wood-panelled front hall, she felt for a moment as though all the troubles of the day had slipped from her shoulders. On a worn side table an arrangement of overblown roses filled the air with their sweet scent and dropped their petals. She walked down to the kitchen, which was original to the house and furnished with built-in pine dressers and a big white china sink.
Nancy was making salad sandwiches for tea. A plump woman in her late fifties, Nancy was a cousin of Robin’s, who had come to live at Fossetts and help out with the children almost twenty years earlier. These days, she looked after Birdie.
‘Birdie’s in the summer house,’ Nancy said cheerfully. ‘We’re going to have tea outside.’
Misty managed to smile. ‘Sounds lovely. Can I help?’
‘No. Go and keep Birdie company.’
It was a beautiful warm June evening but Birdie was wrapped in a blanket, for she felt the cold no matter how good the weather. She was a tiny woman, only four feet eleven inches tall and very slight in build. Her weathered face was embellished by a pair of still-lively blue eyes. ‘Isn’t the garden beautiful?’ she sighed appreciatively.
Misty surveyed the dappled shade cast by the trees, the lush green grass of early summer and the soft pink fading show of the rhododendron blooms. It was indeed a tranquil scene. ‘How have you been today?’
Birdie, who hated talking about her health, ignored the question. ‘I had visitors. The new vicar and his wife. They’ve hardly been living here five minutes and already they’ve heard those silly rumours about how I’ve been reduced to genteel poverty by some greedy former foster child.’ Birdie tilted her greying head to one side, bright eyes exasperated. ‘Such nonsense and so I pointed out. Where on earth are these stories coming from?’
‘That business with Dawn, I expect. Someone’s heard something about that and got the wrong end of the stick.’ Misty neglected to add that the more curious of the locals had evidently noted the visible decline in the Pearce fortunes and put the worst possible interpretation on it. But then over the years that the Pearces had fostered, more than one pessimistic neighbour had forecast that they would live to regret taking on such ‘bad’ children.
And sadly, the previous year, Dawn, who had once been fostered by the Pearces, had come to visit and had stolen all Birdie’s jewellery. Birdie had refused to prosecute because Dawn had been a drug addict in a pitiful state. Since then, yielding to Birdie’s persuasions and her own longing to reclaim her life, Dawn had completed a successful rehabilitation programme but none of the jewellery had been recovered.
‘Why do people always want to think the worst?’ Birdie looked genuinely pained for she herself always liked to think the very best of others.
‘No, they don’t,’ Misty soothed.
‘Well, what have you got to tell me today about that handsome Sicilian at Brewsters? I would love to get a peek at a genuine business tycoon. I’ve never seen one except on television,’ Birdie