A Scandalous Engagement. CATHY WILLIAMS

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘SO, YOU’ RE up at last. I didn’t want to disturb you before I left, but have you remembered that the plumber’s coming?’

      Jade crooked the telephone receiver between her cheek and her shoulder and carried on making herself a cup of coffee. Even after six weeks it still felt decadent to be wandering around this kitchen at nine-thirty in the morning, wearing only her usual garb of jeans and tee shirt. She should be at work. That was always the first thought that sprang into her head when she blearily opened her eyes to peer at the clock at the side of the bed. The clock which no longer summoned her peremptorily out of sleep at six-thirty in the morning with an insistent, aggravating beeping that could raise the dead.

      She should be at work. She should be feeling the pressure, because pressure was the only thing that could rescue her from her thoughts. She should be scrambling into her suit and hurrying out of the flat with her bag slung over one shoulder and her briefcase in her hand. She should be preparing for her daily battle with the London Underground, easing her frantic pace only to stop at the news vendor just outside her office block so that she could buy a tabloid to read at lunchtime.

      ‘Of course I’ve remembered that the plumber’s coming.’

      The voice down the other end of the telephone laughed warmly. ‘I can tell from your tone of voice that you’d forgotten. Two o’clock this afternoon.’

      ‘Oh, very optimistic, your precision.’ She poured some milk into her mug and sat down at the kitchen table which, after their initial attempts to keep it free from clutter, now sported enough artist’s materials to start a small cottage industry. ’Didn’t your mother ever tell you that plumbers have a different sense of time keeping to all other mortals?’

      She sipped her coffee, smiling contentedly at the sound of Andy’s voice. How did he do that? How did he manage to make her feel so loved and wanted and secure? She had known him for less than a year, but it almost felt as though she had known him for ever. As though he was somehow meant to be a part of her life. One of the first things her counsellor had told her was that she needed to begin to trust, needed to stop feeling guilty. Had Andy just happened to come along at the right time, when she’d been beginning the difficult, painful process of chipping her barriers away? Was that why she felt so close to him? As though he was the soulmate she had been blindly searching for over the past two years?

      ‘No,’ Andy said thoughtfully down the line. ‘Amongst her erratically scattered pearls of wisdom, advice concerning plumbers was noticeably absent. Do you think that’s been part of my problem?’

      He chuckled softly, and Jade felt a rush of pleasure at his words. Over the past few months he had opened up in ways neither of them would have thought possible. Both of them had. They had tentatively shared the common ground of counselling, learning to expose their fears and voice their nightmares, and it had paid off. They had learned to reach out to each other, and if she still didn’t automatically react with trust to most people, she was getting better.

      ‘Now, there’s a possibility,’ Jade joked back, her eyes skimming over some work she had started the day before and liking what she saw. ‘Okay, I’ll make sure I’m washed and brushed by two, even though I’d bet you ten quid that the man doesn’t show up on time. He’ll stroll in just as we’re about to sit down and eat dinner and rake up a few limp excuses about “burst water pipes, guv.’”

      ‘That’s more than possible, but got to keep the old place ticking over.’

      ‘Don’t I know it.’ There had been an unspoken acceptance between them from the start that sharing this house involved a complicated series of unwritten rules and regulations. No clutter. No mess. Definitely no broken appliances left to go rusty. And top of the list was ‘No Leaks’. Leaking water could destroy wallpaper and ruin all the tasteful silk that seemed to thread through each of the impressive rooms, not to mention wreak havoc with the paintings.

      The paintings, Andy had told her before she had moved in, were worth a small fortune, but she had still been unprepared for the quantity of them. Picassos were dotted about the house with the casual ease that typified people for whom money was no object. She had spent her first day just wandering through the graceful house, nestled in a secluded spot just outside central London, amazed at the profuse splendour while Andy had trailed behind her, smiling indulgently at her gasps of awe.

      The place, which he contemptuously referred to as the Mausoleum, was a testament to well-bred opulence. Nothing was overdone but everything had clearly been chosen with no thought of cost. And, however bitterly he spoke of the background that had failed him, he still fitted in: blond, elegant and as beautiful as any Adonis that had been tenderly crafted by its sculptor.

      Even now, having grown accustomed to all of it, she still found herself wondering what it must have been like to have been brought up amidst such splendour. A house in the country, another in the wilds of Scotland, yet another in the South of France. The holidays in far-flung places. She imagined his parents, now dead for many years, as a glorious, golden couple. She had spotted pictures of them in the house and her imagination had taken flight at the images of his mother, the typical blonde, English rose, and his father, the typical debonair, dark Greek tycoon. It seemed somehow tragic that all their son could resurrect from his childhood memories was a legacy of nannies, a loathing of boarding schools and a glimpse of his beautiful parents in between their endless and impressive social engagements.

      From what she had gathered over time, his had been a life of loneliness and absentee parents, who had compensated for their shortcomings with lavish gifts and money. She pictured him, and his two siblings, rattling around in all those huge houses with a wake of well-paid nannies in attendance, waiting for the hour when their glamorous parents would pay them a brief night-time visit for the statutory peck on the cheek and a quick inspection to make sure that nothing was visibly amiss and the nannies were doing what they were paid for.

      Andy