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‘Hey!’
She chased up the bank and snatched at the bowl just as it tipped off the side of the step and shattered on a stone that edged the straggly garden.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’ she told the big, lolloping dog that peered at her with mournful eyes through its long, matted fringe of mottled grey. It was quite the ugliest animal she had ever seen, looking like a lanky cross between a foolish Afghan and giant poodle on a bad-hair day, with a ridiculous tail that curved lopsidedly over its back in a soggy flag of defiance. It smelled strongly of seaweed and wet wool. ‘Give me that!’ she said, tugging the spoon out of its gummy mouth, pulling a face at the skein of drool that came along with it.
‘Yuk!’
She could have sworn the dog grinned at her before starting to slaver at the pieces of china, rattling them against the stone.
‘Don’t do that, you’ll cut your tongue,’ she scolded, pushing at the sandy grey coat. The dog staggered aside and she was horrified to see that it only had three legs, the right rear one ending in a woolly stump at its bony hip.
‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she said, scooping up the broken bowl and scratching the dog between its floppy ears. It responded with an ecstatic squirming and cheerful caper that showed her it had well adapted to its handicap.
For all its size it was pathetically scrawny under the shaggy fur and she wondered if it was a stray, until she saw a glimpse of black collar buried in the shaggy ruff around its neck.
‘Come here and let’s see who you are,’ she said, but when she tried to slide her fingers under the black webbing the dog pranced away, returning to duck and snuffle at her sandy toes, skittering away again as she squealed with ticklish laughter at the rough swipe of its tongue.
She put her hands on her hips and tried a stern, ‘Heel,’ but the hairy head merely cocked in momentary puzzlement before it loped over to give a doggy salute to a stunted shrub at the corner of the house, a performance greatly facilitated by not having to cock a leg. Then, with a loud ‘wuff’ that made her jump, it lunged at the ventilating grate in the base of the house, its claws rattling against the concrete blocks, and Kate remembered the rats.
‘I don’t suppose you’re available for a job as a hired assassin?’ she murmured above the excited whines, knowing that her tender heart would never want even a rat to die anything but a humane death.
But her three-legged visitor had already revealed a sad lack of interest in gainful employment, giving one final bark as it dashed off to investigate a screech of scavenging seagulls fighting over stolen booty further along the beach.
After wrapping up the fragments of china in newspaper and making a note of the breakage for the rental agent, Kate did the rest of her unpacking before deciding the sun was high enough in the sky to be suitable for basking.
She changed into her new bikini, quite modest in terms of coverage but in a vibrant, eye-catching purple piped with lime-green that the shop-assistant had assured her would make heads turn. One in particular, she hoped. Since there was a slight breeze she draped herself in the matching see-through, lime-green sun wrap that had cost even more than the exorbitant bikini.
Dragging the light, powdered-aluminium sun-lounger from the ‘games cupboard’ in the garage out onto the back lawn, Kate unfolded it and positioned it carefully to take advantage of the su
n’s rays, while making sure it was angled in full view of next door’s wrap-around windows. She had originally intended to go down onto the beach, but decided that she would be more visible on the elevated flat of the section.
Stashing a drink bottle where it would be in the shade of her body, along with her sunscreen and a few emergency crackers wrapped in a paper towel, Kate spread a thick beach towel over the woven plastic bed of the lounger and adjusted the back to a comfortable angle. Then she settled down, sliding her sunglasses onto her nose and plopping her purple straw hat on her head. Hefting the glossy library book she had brought with her, she propped it open across her hips.
She would have liked to have read one of the instructional baby books or pregnancy manuals she had hidden away in the bottom of her suitcase, but that would have been a rather obvious give-away, even to an insensitive jackass who was too busy breaking hearts to recognise a good woman when he had her cradled in the palm of his hand…
Kate leafed to page one.
‘Simon Macmillan traded in blood and diamonds.’
She had read Drake Daniels’ first novel more than once before, but then she had been reading for pleasure—and pride. Now she was reading for research. All authors put something of their real selves into their books. Somewhere in these pages were traces of the man she was trying to understand. Perhaps the skilled researcher in her would be able to sort out some sober facts from the thrilling fiction.
If not, well…she knew it would be a cracking good read, and Mac would turn out to be an undercover good guy who destroyed a dirty deal in conflict diamonds while losing his double-crossing rebel girlfriend to treachery and torture.
Psychological subtext: women are not safe to trust.
At first Kate twitched and shifted and was uncomfortably conscious of her exposed position, but gradually she became engrossed in the familiar story and forgot about ulterior motives, or that she was not supposed to be reading for sheer kicks.
Roused from her trance when her legs began to tingle with warmth, she got up and lowered the back of the lounger so that she could lie down on her stomach, placing the book flat in front on the grass and propping her chin in her hands, wriggling her hips to flatten out the slight sag in the plastic that had been hollowed out by her bottom. Occasionally a midge would perform a crazy loop-the-loop across her field of vision or an annoying fly trickle across the back of her leg, but eventually the drugging combination of sun and sea and weeks of nervous tension took their toll, and before Mac had even kissed his deadly African princess for the first time Kate had drifted off to a light doze, her nose buried in the crook of her elbow.
She was disturbed by a chill shadow across her upper body and surreptiously wiped the drool that had gathered at the corner of her sleep-slackened mouth on her arm before she lifted her head to smile at her visitor. Shades of that ramshackle dog!
All her cleverly rehearsed phrases zipped out of her head, her smile lingering as a polite rictus when she saw that the figure looming over her was not the tarnished hero of her life but his deadly Titian princess, dressed neck-to-toe in white. Although the hair was more carroty than artistic auburn, decided Kate in an inward yowl, and the lady was definitely pushing thirty, at the very least. That alabaster brow was positively botoxical, and those luscious lips—that had to be collagen!
‘Hi,’ Kate said wittily, pushing the comforting shield of her sunglasses up her nose, while simultaneously trying to untwist the wrap that had got trapped under her side as she tried to gracefully roll over on the uncooperative sun-lounger. The aluminium frame made an ominous creaking sound as her elbow slipped through a gap in the webbing, but she finally managed to wrestle herself free and sit up in reasonable dignity.
‘We haven’t met, have we? I’m Katherine Crawford.’
She held out her hand. Politeness, she had learned from her lethally charming mother, could be very empowering.
