The view of the sunset over sweeping lawns and tree-fringed
lake was so perfect the dining room could have been part of
a film set.
Sarah's escort smiled at her in satisfaction. 'You obviously
approve of my choice, darling?'
'Of course. Who wouldn't?' But she was surprised by it.
Oliver normally wined and dined her in more conservative
restaurants, where the cuisine was less haute
than Easthope Court. 'Is this a special occasion?'
His eyes slid away. 'Let's leave explanations until later.
Our meal is on its way.'
The waiter set Sarah's entrée in front of her, and with a
hint of flourish removed the cover from an offering of such
culinary art she looked at the plate in awe, not sure
whether she should eat it or frame it. But instead of
sharing that with someone who took his food as seriously as
Oliver, she asked about his latest triumph in court.
Sarah listened attentively as she ate, made appropriate
comments at intervals, but at last laid down her knife and
fork, defeated. Artistic creation or not, the meal was so
substantial she couldn't finish it.
'You didn't care for the lobster?' asked Oliver anxiously.
'It was lovely, but I ate too much of that gorgeous bread
before it arrived.'
He beckoned a waiter over. 'Choose a pudding, then, while I
excuse myself for a moment. Cheese as usual for me, Sarah.'
She gave the order and sat back, eyeing her surroundings
with interest. The other women present—some young,
others not—were dressed with varying success in
red-carpet-type couture, but their male escorts were largely
on the mature side. Though a younger man at table nearby
caught her eye, if only because his head of thick, glossy
hair stood out like a bronze helmet among his balding male
companions. He raised his glass in smiling toast, and Sarah
looked away, flushing, as Oliver rejoined her.
'So what are we celebrating?' she demanded, as he began on a
wedge of Stilton.
'Now, you must always remember, Sarah,' he began, 'that I
have your best interests at heart.'
Her heart sank. 'Go on.'
Oliver reached out a hand to touch hers. 'Sweetheart,
there's a vacancy coming up in my chambers next month. Make
me happy; give up this obsession of yours and take the job.
With your logical brain I'm sure you'd enjoy legal work.'
Sarah's colour, already high, rose a notch. 'You mean you
brought me here just to pitch the same old story? Oliver, I
love you very much,' she said with complete truth, 'and I
know you care about me, but you really must let me live my
life my own way.'
'But I just can't believe it's the right way!' Oliver sat
back, defeated. 'I hate to think of you messing about with
plaster and paint all day in that slum you bought.'
'Oliver,' she said patiently, 'it's what I do. It's what I
know how to do. And I love doing it. I'd be
useless—and miserable—as a legal secretary, even
in illustrious chambers like yours.'
'But you're obviously not taking care of yourself or eating
properly—'
'If you just wanted to feed me before I go back to starving
in my garret you needn't have wasted money on a place like
this,' she informed him.
'I chose somewhere special because it's my birthday
tomorrow,' he said with dignity. 'I hoped you'd enjoy
helping me celebrate it.'
'Oh Oliver!' Sarah felt a sharp pang of remorse. 'If you're
trying to make me feel guilty you're succeeding. I'm sorry.
But I can't take the job. Not even to celebrate your birthday.'
He nodded, resigned. 'Ah, well, it was worth a try. We won't
let it spoil our evening. Thank you for the witty birthday
card, by the way, but you shouldn't have bought a present.'
'Didn't you like the cravat?'
'Of course I liked it. But it was much too expensive—'
'Nothing too good for my one and only godfather!'
Oliver smiled fondly. 'That's so sweet of you, darling, and
of course I'll wear it with pride. But you need to watch
your pennies.' He leaned nearer and touched her hand. 'You
do know, Sarah, that if you're in need of any kind you only
have to ask.'
'Thank you, Oliver, of course I do.' But she'd have to be in
dire straits before she would.
As they got up to leave, the man Sarah had noticed earlier
hurried to intercept them.
Oliver beamed as he shook the outstretched hand. 'Why, hello
there, young man. I didn't know you were here.'
'You were too absorbed in your beautiful companion to notice
me, Mr Moore.' He turned to Sarah with a crooked smile.
'Hello. I'm Alex Merrick.'
Quick resentment quenched her unexpected pang of
disappointment. And as if his name wasn't enough, something
in his smile made it plain he thought Oliver was her
elderly—and wealthy—sugar daddy.
'Sarah Carver,' she returned, surprised to see comprehension
flare in the piercingly light eyes in an angular face that
was striking rather than good-looking.
'Sarah is helping me celebrate my birthday,' Oliver informed
him.
'Congratulations! It must be an important one to bring you
down from London for the occasion.'
'Not really—unless you count each day as an
achievement at my age. I'll be sixty-four come midnight,'
said Oliver with a sigh, and made a visible effort to suck
in his stomach.
'That's just your prime, sir,' Alex assured him. 'Are you
from London, too, Miss Carver?'
'She is originally.' Oliver answered for her. 'But Sarah
moved to this part of the world last year. I've been trying
to persuade her to return to civilisation, but with no
success. She's in property development,' he added proudly.
'Snap. That's partly my bag, too,' Alex told her.
Oliver laughed comfortably. 'Not exactly on the same scale,'
he informed Sarah. 'Alex is the third generation of his
family to run the Merrick Group.'
'How interesting,' she said coolly, and smiled up at Oliver.
'Darling, it's past my bedtime.'
'Right,' he said promptly, and put his arm round her to lead
her away. 'Nice seeing you again, young man. My regards to
your father.'
Alex Merrick's eyes travelled from Oliver's arm to Sarah's
face with a look that brought her resentment to boiling
point. 'I hope we meet again.'
'You weren't very friendly,' commented Oliver in the car
park. 'You might do well to cultivate young Alex, darling.
The Merrick name carries clout in these parts.'
'Not with me,' Sarah said fiercely.
The journey home was tiring. Oliver returned to his
proposition, and argued all the way, but when he paused to
draw breath Sarah told him it would turn her life upside
down again to move back to London.
'I did all that in reverse not so long ago, Oliver. I don't
fancy doing it again for a while, if at all. I like living
in the wilds, as you call it—'
'But what do you do with yourself in the evenings, for God's
sake?'
Glossing over the weariness which more often than not sent
her early to bed with a book, Sarah said something vague
about cinema trips and concerts, hoping Oliver wouldn't ask
for details.
'A lot different from London,' he commented, as they reached
Medlar House.
'Which is entirely the point, Oliver. Would you like some
coffee?'
'No, thank you, darling. I'll head straight back to
Hereford. I'm meeting with a local solicitor first thing in
the morning.'
She leaned across and kissed him. 'Thank you for the
wonderful dinner, and for the job offer. But do
stop worrying about me. I'll be fine.'
'I hope so,' he said with a sigh. 'You know where I am if
you need me.'
'I do.' She patted his cheek. 'Happy birthday for tomorrow,
Oliver.'
Sarah waved him off, and with a yawn made for her
ground-floor retreat in a building which had once housed an
elite school for girls. Advertised as a studio flat, when
the school had been converted into apartments, she'd agreed
to take a look at it without much hope. It had been the last
on the list of remotely possible flats shown her by the
estate agent, who had rattled through his patter at such
speed he'd been unaware that the moment she'd walked through
the door Sarah fell in love.
The agent had given her the hard sell, emphasising that it
was the last available in her price range in the building,
and offered interesting individual touches.
'If you mean a ceiling four metres high and one wall
composed entirely of windows,' Sarah remarked. 'Heat loss
must be a problem.'
Crestfallen, the young man had informed her that it had once
been a music room, which explained the lofty dimensions, and
then he'd pointed out its view of the delightful gardens and
repeated his spiel about the building's security. Sarah had
heard him out politely, and when he'd eventually run out of
steam, he saw her back to her car, promising to ring her in
the morning with other possibilities.
She'd forced herself to wait until he rang, praying that no
one had beaten her to it overnight with the flat. When his
call finally came he'd given her details of a riverside
apartment. Way out of her price range, she'd told him, and
then as an apparent afterthought mentioned that since there
was nothing else suitable on his current list she might as
well take another look at the Medlar House bedsit. He'd
uttered shocked protests at the term for such a picturesque
studio flat, but once they were back in the lofty, sunlit
room again Sarah had listed its disadvantages as her opening
shot, then begun haggling. At last the agent had taken out
his phone to consult a higher authority, and agreement had
been reached on a price well below the maximum Sarah had
been prepared to pay to live in Medlar House—which,
quite apart from its other attractions, was only a short
drive from the row of farm cottages she was about to
transform into desirable dwellings.
All that seemed a lifetime ago. Feeling restless after her
unaccustomed evening out, Sarah loosened her hair, then sat
at the narrow trestle table that served as desk, drawing
board, and any other function required of it. She booted up
her laptop, did a search, and gave a snort of laughter. To
say that Sarah Carver and Alexander Merrick were both in
property was such a stretch it was ludicrous. These days the
Merrick Group also had extensive manufacturing interests, at
home and abroad—and the biggest buzzword of
all—it was into recycling on a global scale. She
closed the laptop in sudden annoyance. It was irrational to
feel so hostile still. But the look the man had given her
had annoyed her intensely. Oliver was sixty-three—she
glanced at her watch—sixty-four now. She was almost
forty years his junior. So of course Merrick Mark Three had
jumped to the wrong conclusion about Oliver's role in her
life. Her eyes kindled. As if she cared.
She went through her night-time routine in her minuscule
bathroom, then climbed up to her sleeping balcony and hung
up the little black dress she hadn't worn for ages. She got
into bed and stretched out to gaze down through the
balustrade at the moonlight streaming through the shutters,
hoping the lobster wouldn't give her nightmares. She had to
be up early next morning, as usual. The first of the
cottages was coming along nicely, and once furnished it
would function as a show house to tempt buyers for the
others in the row. Harry Sollers, the local builder who
worked with her, would be there before her, in case, as
sometimes happened, he knocked off half an hour early to do
a job for a friend.
When the row of cottages had gone up for sale by sealed
auction Harry's circle of cronies at his local pub had fully
expected some big company to demolish them and pack as many
new houses as possible on the site. When the news had broken
that a developer from London had snaffled the property there
had been much morose shaking of heads in the Green
Man—until the landlord had surprised his clients by
reporting that the property developer was a young woman, and
she was looking for someone local to work on the cottages.
At which point Harry Sollers—semi-retired master
builder, committed bachelor and misogynist—had amazed
everyone in the bar by saying he might be interested.
Sarah never ceased to be grateful that, due to Harry
Sollers' strong views on the demolition of perfectly good
living accommodation, he'd agreed to abandon semi-retirement
to help her turn the one-time farm labourers' cottages into
attractive, affordable homes. Gradually Harry had helped her
sort out damp courses, retile the roofs, and deal with
various basic faults shown up by the building survey. He had
been openly sceptical about her own skills until he'd seen
proof of them, but openly impressed when he first saw her
plastering a wall, and completely won over the day she took
a lump hammer to the boards covering up the original fireplaces.
But from the start Harry had drawn very definite lines about
his own capabilities, and told Sarah she would need to
employ local craftsmen for specialised jobs. He'd enlisted
his nephew's experienced help with the cottage roofs,
recommended a reliable electrician to do the rewiring, and
for the plumbing contacted his friend Fred Carter, who soon
proved he was top-of-the-tree at his craft. The houses had
begun to look like real homes once the quality fittings were
in place, but to his surprise Sarah had informed Fred that
she would do the tiling herself, as well as fit the
cupboards in both bathrooms and kitchens.
'I'm good at that kind of thing,' she'd assured him, without
conceit.
This news had caused a stir in the Green Man.
'You might have to put up with a few sightseers now and
again, boss, just to prove Fred wasn't having them on,'
Harry had warned her.
He was right. Harry's cronies had come to look. But once
they'd seen her at work they'd agreed that the city girl
knew what she was doing.
But much as she enjoyed her work there were days when Sarah
felt low-key, and the next day was one of them—which
was probably due to Oliver and his coaxing about the vacancy
in his chambers. It was certainly nothing to do with the
lobster, which had not, after all, given her nightmares.
Nor, she assured herself irritably, was it anything to do
with meeting Alex Merrick. She'd slept well and risen early,
as usual. Nevertheless her mood today was dark. She would
just have to work through it. Fortunately Harry was never a
ray of sunshine first thing in the morning either, and
wouldn't notice. But for once she was wrong.
'You're early—and you don't look so clever today,'
Harry commented.
'I was out socialising last night,' she informed him, and
went on with the cupboard door she was hanging.
His eyebrows shot up. 'Who was the lucky lad, then?'