But even as she spoke he’d pulled out a pillow from its pillowcase and tucked the frozen packet inside. She watched as he carefully held it up against the swelling and heard Wendy’s small moan of pain.

‘Is there anything else I can do? I’d like to help.’

Nick glanced up. ‘If you want to be useful you could take your car down to the village and point the ambulance in the right direction.’

‘I’m sure there’s no need for that. I found my way here without a problem.’

‘But it’s a single track road and if they miss the junction there’s nowhere to turn for a couple of miles.’

Lydia frowned, uncertain what to do. What he was saying about the junction was true—but it was more than that. He so clearly wanted her to leave.

She heard the elderly woman mumble incomprehensibly and wondered whether he wished her to go because he knew how much Wendy would hate being seen this way. If the situation was reversed, if she were the woman lying on the floor, she would prefer there were no strangers to see it.

And there was no doubt that Wendy trusted Nick implicitly, not once had she glanced across in Lydia’s direction. Her eyes searched out his as though they would be her salvation.

It felt intensely private. His strong hand calmly held Wendy’s frail agitated one in his. Lydia didn’t think she’d ever seen a man so gentle or so eminently capable of managing a situation alone.

‘I’ll wait in the village.’

Nick scarcely noticed she’d spoken; his mind and energy were focused entirely on Wendy Bennington.

As it should be, she reminded herself. Of course, he should be totally concerned about the sick woman.

Lydia reached inside an inner pocket of her handbag and pulled out a business card. ‘Would you call me? I’d like to know how Ms Bennington is doing.’

He turned, his expression unreadable. If he wasn’t a poker player, he ought to be. She couldn’t tell whether he thought it reasonable that she wanted to know what happened to Wendy or whether he thought it an intrusion.

‘Please?’

His face didn’t change, but after a short pause he reached out and took her card. ‘Make sure you leave the front door open,’ he said, tucking it in the back pocket of his jeans.

Lydia supposed she had to take that as an agreement that he would call her. Whether he would remember to actually do it or not was a different matter.

Quietly she walked down the stairs and into the oppressively gloomy kitchen. Her briefcase was still by the rusting boiler where she’d left it. Lydia bent and picked it up, before taking a last opportunity to glance about her.

Sad. It was a truly sad place.

Slowly she walked along the hall and carefully put the front door on the latch. It was strange that Nick Regan let Wendy Bennington live in such a way. He so obviously loved her. It was in the way he’d brushed her hair off her forehead and held her hand.

So who was he? Why was he so concerned about Wendy Bennington? It surely went beyond being a mere friend, but his name hadn’t appeared in her research. As far as she’d been able to ascertain, Wendy had no family at all. Not even a nephew. An only child of only children.

She walked down the narrow front path, mulling over the possibilities. At the gate she stopped, mouth open in disbelief. His car was parked immediately in front of her own—and her mother’s wealth barometer had been spot on. Nick Regan drove a top of the range sports car. So who the heck was he?

Lydia opened her car door, feeling vaguely ashamed. There was something in her which made it impossible to switch off ‘the journalist’. Why couldn’t she merely be pleased that Wendy had someone who loved her? Wendy had lived her life entirely for other people; it was right that when she needed help herself there should be someone to give it. Someone who cared because they chose to, rather than doing so out of a sense of duty.

She tipped the front seat of her more modest car forward and slid in her briefcase. Perhaps she hadn’t been so far adrift in thinking he was behaving like a son? It had to be a possibility because what else was there?

The engine purred into life and Lydia took a last glance back at the cottage through her rear-view mirror. He was the right kind of age. Thirty-four, maybe as much as thirty-eight. Certainly no more.

Perhaps he was the result of a passionate affair? She let her imagination soar. An affair with a married man? Or the husband of a friend? Or was he a sperm donor baby? Or…

She was getting ridiculous. If Wendy Bennington had ever been pregnant someone somewhere would have written about it. She glanced up again at her driver’s mirror and groaned at the image she presented. Her hair was still bunched up in a childish topknot. Hardly the look of an award-winning journalist.

Damn.

She ripped out the scrunchie and let her hair fall softly around her shoulders. Nick bloody Regan probably thought she was some kind of tea girl rather than the woman his…friend…had chosen as her biographer.

It shouldn’t matter. Lydia crunched her car into first gear. It didn’t matter—at all. But…but this was not turning out to be a good day.

Nick heard her leave. First her footsteps on the stairs and then the sound of her car pulling away. He let out his breath in a steady stream and tried to settle himself into a more comfortable position on the floor.

He hadn’t expected Lydia Stanford would give up so easily. Her kind always stayed to the last. They circled overhead, waiting for the kill, like the scavengers they were. The wonder was that she hadn’t whipped out her camera and taken some photographs as ‘background colour’—or whatever she called it to salve her conscience.

Nick rested his head against the wall. There were other journalists, with far better credentials than Ms Stanford, who would have been more than anxious to write an authorised biography. Some he would have trusted to do a fair and balanced job of it.

But Lydia Stanford…

No. He wouldn’t trust her as far as he could spit. What Wendy had been thinking of to insist on a woman capable of building her career by using her own sister’s tragedy he couldn’t imagine. You had to be an automaton to do what Lydia had done.

Any normal person would have been overcome by grief at her sister’s attempted suicide. They’d have hung by her bedside, too traumatised to do anything else.

But not Lydia Stanford. Ms Stanford had launched an exhaustive vendetta against the man at the centre of the scandal. She’d meticulously collected information on his fraudulent business dealings, making sure she had enough to ruin him.

And in the process she’d made her own fortune. Not bad going. But what about the sister? How did she feel about being a stepping stone in her sister’s career?

Even his ex-wife, Ana, wouldn’t have been so coldly calculating. He rubbed a hand across the spike of pain in his forehead. Or just not as overt? But that made precious little difference to the people around them. They still got hurt. Collateral damage in a game they didn’t know they were playing.

One thing was certain; Wendy’s decision to choose Lydia Stanford had nothing to do with the mane of honey-brown hair which she wore in that half up, half down sexy thing women did. Nor would Wendy have noticed the amber flecks in her brown eyes, or her long legs, or, he altered his position slightly, her unfortunate taste for his ex-wife’s jacket design. Presumably Ms Stanford thought it worth selling her soul to be able to afford an Anastasia Wilson jacket. Now Ana would most certainly have approved of that.

Nick shifted uncomfortably on the floor, listening out for the sound of the ambulance. He stroked the hand in his lap. ‘It can’t be much longer, Wendy. Hang on in there for me.’

He watched the frown of concentration and heard the quietly determined, ‘Apple.’

He leant closer. ‘What about an apple?’

With total concentration she carefully repeated, ‘Apple.’

It made no sense. Nick kept stroking her hand and tried to sound calm and reassuring. The minutes ticked by interminably slowly.

He tried to picture Lydia Stanford at that crucial junction making sure the ambulance crew didn’t waste precious minutes. She’d do that, he decided. She might have ambition running through her veins where lesser mortals had blood, but he believed she’d take a few moments to help the woman whose biography she’d agreed to write.

Even Ana would have spared a few minutes from her hectic schedule. His smile twisted. Or perhaps not. Ana spared no thought for anyone but herself.

The garden gate banged and he sat a little straighter. Thank God. ‘Up here,’ he shouted.

He heard the mumble of voices as they came into the hall; seconds later a face appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Wendy Bennington, is it?’ the woman said, taking in the slumped figure on the floor.

Nick nodded, standing up and brushing down his jeans.

‘Your friend made sure we didn’t miss the turning.’ She knelt down and spoke to Wendy. ‘I’m Sarah. We’ll soon have you sorted, my love.’

CHAPTER TWO

IZZY put a plate of spicy crab cakes and salad in front of her sister. ‘So, tell me. What’s the matter?’ She sat down opposite Lydia and flicked back her softly waving hair. ‘I might have overdone the chilli in the dipping sauce, so go careful.’

Lydia took a mouthful of the crab cake. ‘This is fantastic.’

‘I know. It’s the Tobasco.’

‘You’re getting good.’

‘I’m a genius,’ Izzy said, smiling over the top of her glass of wine, ‘but that’s not why you’re here, is it? What’s happened?’

‘You mean apart from Wendy Bennington having a stroke?’

Izzy nodded. ‘Apart from that. Although it’s horrible for her, of course. I don’t mean it isn’t, but…’

The silence hung between them.

‘You’ve seen far worse things than an elderly woman having a stroke, Liddy.’

Which was true.

‘So, what’s bothering you?’

Lydia sighed and looked across at her younger sister, uncertain as to what it was that was nagging at her. It seemed to be a whole mixture of things twirling about in her head making her feel discontented. Irritated. That wasn’t the right word either.

It was as though she’d been travelling happily in one direction only to have it violently blocked off. Like a train being derailed, if you liked. Normally she’d have worked out a way to make it an opportunity, but…

Lydia winced. It didn’t feel like an opportunity. It felt—

She didn’t know what it felt like. There was something about seeing Wendy Bennington slumped in that doorway that had affected her deeply—and in a way she found difficult to understand. Instead of driving back to Hammersmith she’d rung Izzy and begged a bed for the night.

But why? Her sister was absolutely right when she said she’d seen and experienced so much worse.

In her nine years as a journalist she’d witnessed many terrible things. Not just death and injury, but mindless violence and examples of sadistic cruelty that defied description. Some days it was difficult to maintain any kind of belief in the innate goodness of human nature, but she’d trained herself to cope with it. She was inured against it all.

Almost.

Certainly detached. Lydia picked up her wineglass and sipped. It was as if a steel screen came down and kept her objective. It was the only way it was possible to do her job. She imagined it was similar to the way a surgeon worked. You could care, really deeply, but not so much that it prevented you from thinking clearly.

She looked across at Izzy, patiently waiting, her hands cradled around her wineglass. The only time in her life when she’d felt completely out of control was when she’d found Izzy unconscious. There would never, could never, be any event more terrible than finding her sister had taken an overdose.

She hadn’t felt detached then. That night she’d experienced emotions she hadn’t known she was capable of feeling. She’d believed Izzy would die and fear had ripped through her like lightning in a night sky. There’d been the sense of being utterly alone and desperately frightened. Not even the unexpected death of her parents had inspired such an extreme reaction.

The only thing that had kept her functioning, on any level, was the passionate hatred she felt for Steven Daly—the man responsible. Bitter anger had uncurled like a serpent within her. It had driven her. Had demanded retribution.

Looking at Izzy now, little more than two years on, it could almost have been a dream. She looked so young—and hopeful. Time was a great healer.

‘Well?’ Izzy prompted.

Lydia forced a smile. ‘I think it was the house,’ she said at last, trying to put words on thoughts she couldn’t quite catch hold of. ‘You’ve never seen anything like it. She lives in a cottage that time’s all but forgotten. All alone in the middle of nowhere.’

‘Perhaps she likes solitude? Some people do.’

‘It’s not that…It’s…’ Lydia frowned. ‘The cottage smells of damp and cat urine…and then there are all these frozen meals for one in the freezer. It’s so incredibly…sad. There’s no other word for it—’ She broke off. ‘Oh, no!’

‘What?’

‘I’d forgotten about the cat.’ Lydia put down her wineglass. ‘She’s got a cat.’

‘It’s not your problem, Liddy.’

‘But who’s going to feed it?’

‘Probably the irritating Nick Regan. It really isn’t your problem,’ Izzy repeated, taking in her sister’s expression. ‘If not him, there’ll be a neighbour.’

‘You think?’

‘There’s bound to be.’

Lydia relaxed. Of course there was. Wendy Bennington went abroad for long stretches of time. There were bound to be structures in place to take care of her pet. Lydia picked up her knife and fork. ‘You’re right. I know you’re right. It’s just…’

Izzy smiled. ‘You really like this Wendy Bennington, don’t you?’

‘I hardly know her.’ Lydia cut a bite-sized piece off her crab cake. ‘We’ve spoken on the phone half a dozen times, no more. I’d never met her face to face.’ Until today—when she’d been confused and frightened. Nothing like the woman she’d been expecting. The image of her slumped in her bedroom doorway hovered at the front of Lydia’s mind.

‘But you like her. I can tell you do.’

Lydia paused, fork halfway to her mouth. Did that explain it? She certainly admired Wendy. Had been flattered and very excited at the prospect of writing her biography.

Izzy seemed to follow her thoughts. ‘There’s no reason to think you won’t still write the biography. Give it a few days and see how serious her stroke was. You might be surprised.’

‘I might,’ she conceded.

‘Perhaps that Nick Regan will phone you.’

Lydia pulled a face. ‘I’d be surprised at that. He didn’t like me at all.’

‘Why?’

‘No idea.’ Lydia thought for a moment. ‘It didn’t help that he found me standing on a flat roof, trying to get into the cottage through an upstairs window, but—’ she looked up as Izzy gave a sudden spurt of laughter ‘—I don’t think it was that.’

‘I can’t think why. Most people would think it odd.’

Lydia shook her head, a reluctant twinkle in her eyes. ‘It probably didn’t help,’ she conceded, cutting another mouthful off her crab cake, ‘but he really didn’t like me. At all. You know, eyes across a crowded room, instantaneous dislike. No mistaking it.’

‘Is he handsome?’ Izzy sat back.

‘That’s irrelevant.’

‘It’s never irrelevant.’

Lydia ignored her.

‘Well, is he?’

‘No.’ Even without looking up she could feel Izzy smile. She put down her fork. ‘Not exactly.’

‘Which means he is.’

‘It does not!’

And then Izzy laughed again. ‘He is, though. I searched for his name on the Internet while you were having your shower. He’s gorgeous. A bit like…what’s the name of that actor in…Oh, stuff it, I can’t remember. Regency thing. You used to have him as your screensaver.’

‘The actor from Pride and Prejudice? Nick Regan looks nothing like him!’ Lydia protested.

‘Not exactly, but a bit. He’s got the same brooding, intense expression. At least, this Nick Regan does. He’s an inventor. I think.’ She waved her hand as though it didn’t matter in the slightest. ‘Basically, he is Drakes, if you get what I mean. He owns the company and came up with the idea of the electrical component in the first place. Worth millions.’

Lydia frowned. ‘He can’t be. That’s Nicolas…’ Regan-Phillips. She closed her eyes. Damn it! It couldn’t be.

Could it? And, if so, what had he got to do with Wendy Bennington?

‘I’ve bookmarked it for you to see.’

‘I’ll look later.’

Could Nick Regan be Nicolas Regan-Phillips? Izzy must have made a mistake. A multimillionaire corporate businessman and a human rights campaigner—what could possibly link the two together?

The cottage had been securely locked up. Lydia moved the terracotta pot with very little expectation of finding the key beneath it—but there it was.

She clutched the small tin of cat food and bent to pick up the key. If the almighty Nicolas Regan-Phillips had anticipated she might return to the cottage he might not have put it back there. So much for his apparently awesome ability to read character, but at least the cat wouldn’t starve.

The back door opened easily. Izzy had laughed at her for deciding on making the thirty minute detour, but it felt like the right thing to do. How could she return to London knowing she could have done something to help Wendy but had chosen not to? And this was little enough.

‘Cat,’ she called softly. She set her handbag on the stainless steel draining board. ‘Cat, where are you? Breakfast time.’

The bowl of leftover cat food on the floor looked revolting. Lydia picked it up with two fingers and carried it across to a plastic swing-bin. ‘Why do people keep pets?’ she mumbled softly to herself, turning back to the sink and giving the bowl a swill out. ‘This is disgusting.’

‘To keep them company?’

Lydia gave a startled cry and whipped round.

‘Because they love them?’ Nicolas Regan-Phillips said, leaning against the kitchen doorway, looking much more like the photograph Izzy had found than he had the day before. He wore a sharp and very conventional pinstripe suit. Power dressing at its most effective.

And he was handsome. Her sister’s words popped into her mind and she silently cursed her. The resemblance to her favorite actor was really very superficial, but it was there all the same.

‘I—I came to feed the cat.’ Lydia turned away and pulled back the loop on the tin, irritated at the slight nervous stutter. Where had that come from? And, more importantly, why?

‘So did I.’ He placed a brown paper bag down on the draining board.

‘I hope you don’t mind that I—’ She stopped herself, swinging round to look up at him as a new thought occurred to her. ‘How did you get in?’

He held up a key. ‘Front door.’

‘Oh.’ Lydia cursed herself for the inanity of her reply. Of course he would have Wendy’s key. He would have needed it to lock up the cottage. What was the matter with her?

She carefully scooped out the contents of the tin with a spoon, aware that Nick continued to watch her. He made her feel uncomfortable, as though, perhaps, she’d been caught out doing something he considered wrong rather than the good deed she’d intended. ‘I suddenly remembered I’d seen a cat. I couldn’t leave it to starve,’ she said, glancing up.

He really did have the most inscrutable face. Normally she was good at picking up emotional nuances—but Nicholas Regan-Phillips seemed to short circuit some connection and she was left uncertain.

On balance he didn’t seem as angry as he’d been yesterday. More suspicious. She looked away. It probably wasn’t anything personal. He had a reputation for avoiding journalists and for protecting his privacy. Lydia swilled out the empty tin under the tap. ‘Does Wendy have a recycling bin?’

‘I imagine so.’

Lydia looked up in time to catch his swift frown. If she puzzled him she was glad. He certainly puzzled her. What had he to do with Wendy Bennington? She hadn’t managed to discover any connection at all. It was a mystery—and mysteries really bugged her.

‘Shall I leave this on the side then?’

‘I’m sure that’ll be fine.’

Lydia carefully placed the tin at the back of the draining board and rinsed the spoon. ‘How’s Wendy?’

There was a small beat of silence while, it seemed, he evaluated her right to ask the question. ‘Better than she looked yesterday.’

Lydia glanced over her shoulder, a question in her eyes.

‘She’s had a TIA. A mini-stroke, if you like. She’ll be fine.’ His mouth quirked into a half-smile. It was a nice mouth, firm and sensual. ‘No permanent damage, but she’s been told to make some life changes.’

‘That’s…fantastic.’

His smile broadened and something inside her flickered in recognition. ‘I’d love to hear you try and convince her of that.’

‘When will she be home?’

‘Well—’ he stretched out the word ‘—that depends on who you speak to. She’s broken her ankle. It’s a fairly simple break, apparently, and doesn’t need surgery, but…’

Lydia looked around her and then down at the uneven floor levels.

Nick followed her gaze. ‘Exactly. She’s not going to manage here for a few weeks, however much she’d rather be in her own home.’

‘No,’ Lydia agreed. She placed the clean bowl back on the floor and picked up the other one. ‘So, who’s won?’

‘The cards are stacked in my favour. I’m here to pick up Nimrod. Hopefully lure him in with food.’

Lydia emptied the water into the sink and put in some fresh. ‘That’s the cat?’

‘Nimrod, the mighty hunter,’ Nick agreed, moving away into the hall, his voice slightly muffled. ‘I gather his namesake was Noah’s great-grandson.’ He reappeared moments later, carrying a cat basket.

‘Great name,’ she said, smiling at the incongruous sight of a city gent with rustic cat basket.

‘Certainly appropriate. He’s something of a killer cat. Wendy picked him up as a stray a couple of years ago, only he turned out not to be so much a waif as a con artist. If it moves, Nimrod will hunt it. There never was a cat more suited to life in the wild.’

Lydia laughed. ‘Good luck getting it into that thing then,’ she said with a gesture at the cat basket.

‘So Wendy’s warned me,’ he said, setting it down on the kitchen table.

She rinsed her hands under the tap. ‘I’m glad it’s all sorted. It suddenly occurred to me, after I’d left, that you might forget about…Nimrod. I was going to contact you today.’

‘How?’

She looked up, surprised by the abrupt single word question. ‘It wouldn’t have been too difficult. A call to your company…’

His nod was almost imperceptible, but she could see his attitude towards her change. ‘I thought you didn’t know who I was.’

‘I didn’t, but you have an Internet presence—’

‘And you checked.’

Lydia thought of Izzy and smiled, deciding that she wouldn’t tell him that her description of him had inspired her sister with a burning fascination to discover who had managed to rile her so much. There’d been little enough information to find, nothing he could object to.

He was thirty-six and divorced. His only child, a daughter, lived with her mother and he was hugely successful at what he did. Nothing particularly unusual in any of that.

‘Do you always pry into other people’s business?’

‘Pretty much.’ She looked about her for a towel on which to dry her hands. ‘It’s an occupational hazard. But, this time, you’ve got to acknowledge I was invited to pry.’

‘Not by me.’

‘By Wendy.’ She turned to face him. ‘Though I dispute the use of the word pry.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Do you?’

<1 2 3 >

На страницу:

Перейти

2 из 3