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She chewed bitterly on her already bruised lip, ignoring the pain she was causing herself as she realised how perilously close she had come to actually worrying about the paucity of food in her fridge and cupboards to satisfy the appetite of a large healthy man.
She herself was careful about her diet, although not to the point of obsession. While not a vegetarian, she rarely touched red meat, preferring more easy to digest fish. She still missed the fresh home-grown vegetables she had enjoyed in the days when her father had employed a gardener. Mirthlessly she acknowledged that, if Oliver Tennant’s arrival as a competitor affected her business as badly as seemed possible, she could always put her spare time to good use by recultivating the old vegetable garden.
She enjoyed cooking in a modest way, and had even begun to think about trying her hand at breadmaking once her new Aga was installed. Mentally visualising the new kitchen she had planned, she caught herself up with a start, her face suddenly flushing bright pink.
Sheila, who was watching her, and who of course could not see the two dark-haired, blue-eyed children who had materialised so treacherously easily through her imagination, asked anxiously if she was all right.
‘Fine,’ Charlotte told her briskly, hurriedly escaping from the office before her mind could play any more tricks on her.
On her way over to her solicitor’s office to give him the tenancy agreement to look over, she told herself severely that she was losing her grip, and then palliated this harsh denouncement by allowing that the size of her kitchen did lend itself to visions of family rather than single life. She had always loved and wanted children…those two could have been any of the children she knew…but they hadn’t been…that dark hair, those blue eyes. She gave a small shudder and closed her mind to any more inadvertent wanderings down such dangerous byways.
Paul’s secretary told her that he was free to see her. When she explained the purpose of her call, far from looking surprised as she had expected, he, like Sheila, was full of approval.
How many more people were going to surprise her by telling her how worried they had been at the thought of her living alone? she wondered half an hour later, when Paul had given his approval to the document Oliver had produced.
‘I am an adult,’ she told him severely as she left. ‘I can look after myself, you know.’
‘No one’s doubting that,’ he assured her. ‘But these days…a woman living alone somewhere so remote… Well, it has given me one or two sleepless nights. I’ve wanted to talk to you about it, but I didn’t want to frighten you.’
Frighten her? If only he knew! She was far more frightened by the prospect of having Oliver Tennant living in her home than she was of the remote possibility of someone breaking into it.
She didn’t want to risk seeing Oliver Tennant in person again, not until she had managed to have a severe talk with herself about the stupidity of reacting so dangerously to him, and so she sent the signed tenancy agreement round to his office in Sophy’s charge and then announced to Sheila that she would be out of the office for the rest of the day, showing prospective clients round some of their properties.
‘I’m meeting a couple who are planning to relocate here from the north of England. They’re retiring and at one time they had family connections with this area. I think they’ll probably go for Cherry Tree Cottage.’
‘Mm. It needs a lot of work doing on it.’
‘Yes, but he’s taking early retirement and, as I understand it, isn’t in a desperate hurry to move down here. The house will be close enough to the village for them. It has a good-sized garden plus a paddock. Apparently they have grandchildren, who will be coming to stay, so they’ll be able to make full use of these attic bedrooms.’
‘Well, good luck,’ Sheila told her.
So far Charlotte had only spoken to the Markhams over the telephone. When she met them at the Bull, they proved to be a pleasant couple in their mid-fifties. Bill Markham had the ruddy skin of a man used to being outdoors; his wife Anne seemed a sensible, placid woman, who was plainly quite happy to go along with her husband’s plans to move them away from their present commuter-belt home to a more rural area.
They had done their homework on the area well, Charlotte discovered, as they set off in her Volvo to view the first property. They were the type of client she most enjoyed dealing with—discerning, without being obsessed with finding a property which matched some impossible dream. She was not surprised when, at the end of the day, Bill Markham asked her if they could contact her in the morning with a view to revisiting three of the five properties they had seen.
As she had expected, both he and his wife ha
d been drawn to Cherry Tree Cottage, which was a good-sized family house on the outskirts of a sleepy village. It had a wonderful garden, which was now rather neglected, its present owner being an old lady in her early eighties who was selling the house to go and live with her younger sister. It did have certain disadvantages—the roof was thatched, it had no mains drainage, and there was no central heating—but the price was a fair one, and Bill and Anne Markham were young enough to enjoy the challenge of taking on a house which, with some hard work and admittedly some money spent on it, could be made into a very attractive home.
She dropped them outside the Bull, having made arrangements to get in touch with them in the morning. As she started to drive away, she saw Oliver Tennant crossing the car park. She had forgotten for the moment that he too was staying at the pub.
Anxious to get away before he should see her and think that she was deliberately trying to court his attention, she moved the Volvo with less than her usual skill, grating the gears in a way which instantly brought his head up as he focused on her.
Furious with herself, all too conscious of her flushed face, Charlotte wished she had the savoir-faire to ignore the fact that he had changed direction and was now walking towards her, and to simply ignore him and drive away.
She couldn’t, though. Her father and her school had both been sticklers for good manners and so, gritting her teeth, she stayed where she was until Oliver had reached the car.
As he leaned down towards the open window of the Volvo she caught the clean fresh-air scent of his skin mingled with something else, something alien and male that made her own skin prickle with unexpected heat.
‘Thanks for sending the agreement back so quickly,’ he said easily. ‘I was hoping to have a word with you so that I could make a formal arrangement to move in.’
Her heart was thudding frantically for no reason at all that she could think of, as though it was responding to the unfamiliar dangerous excitement that quickened her pulse.
‘You haven’t even seen the rooms yet,’ Charlotte pointed out, striving to appear cool and businesslike. ‘They may not be what you’re looking for.’
‘I’m sure they’ll be fine, but, if you’re free for half an hour this evening, perhaps I could drive over, see them, and then we can discuss them properly.’
Charlotte looked at him uncertainly. Come round… Why did she feel so overwrought and tense whenever she saw him? She wasn’t a teenager any more. He was a physically compelling man, yes, but surely she was well beyond the age of reacting like this to mere physical appeal?
