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‘Who is it?’
Samantha shrugged. ‘Dunno. He just said to tell you that your father sent him. He’s alone out front...we’re all heading home.’
‘Thanks, Sammy.’ Ellie frowned and swivelled around to look at the screens on the desk behind her. There were cameras in the front of the shop, in the bakery and in the storeroom, and they fed live footage into the monitors.
Ellie’s brows rose as she spotted him, standing off to the side of a long display of glass-fronted fridges, a rucksack hanging off his very broad shoulders. Week-long stubble covered his jaw and his auburn hair was tousled from finger raking.
Jack Chapman. Okay, she was officially surprised. Any woman who watched any one of the premier news channels would recognise that strong face under the shaggy hair. Ellie wasn’t sure whether he was more famous for his superlative and insightful war reporting or for being the definition of eye candy.
Grubby low-slung jeans and even grubbier boots. A dark untucked T-shirt. He ran a hand through his hair and, seeing a clasp undone on the side pocket of his rucksack, bent down to fix it. Ellie watched the long muscles bunching under his thin shirt, the curve of a very nice butt, the strength of his brown neck.
Oh, yum—oh, stop it now! Get a grip! The important questions were: why was he here, what did he want and what on earth was her father thinking?
Ellie lifted her head as Samantha tapped on the doorframe again and stood there, shuffling on her feet and biting her lip. She recognised that look. ‘What’s up, Sammy?’
Samantha looked at her with big brown eyes. ‘I know that I promised to work for you tomorrow night to help with the petits fours for that fashion show—’
‘But?’
‘But I’ve been offered a ticket to see Linkin Park and they are my favourite band...it’s a free ticket and you know how much I love them.’
Ellie considered giving her a lecture on responsibility and keeping your word, on how promises shouldn’t be broken, but the kid was nineteen and it was Linkin Park. She remembered being that age and the thrill of a kick-ass concert.
And Samantha, battling to put herself through university, couldn’t afford to pay for a ticket herself. She’d remember it for for ever...so what if it meant that Ellie had to work a couple of hours longer? It wasn’t as if she had a life or anything.
‘Okay, I’ll let you off the hook.’ Ellie winced at Samantha’s high-pitched squeal. ‘This time. Now, get out of here.’
Ellie grinned as she heard her whooping down the stairs, but the grin faded when she glanced at the monitor again. Scowling, she reached for her mobile, hastily scrolling through her address book before pushing the green button.
‘Ellie—hello.’ Her father’s deep voice crooned across the miles.
‘Dad, why is Jack Chapman in my bakery?’
Ellie heard her father’s sharp intake of breath. ‘He’s there already? Good. I was worried.’
Of course you were, Ellie silently agreed. For the past ten years, since her eighteenth birthday, she’d listened to her father rumble on and on about Jack Chapman—the son he’d always wanted and never got. ‘He’s the poster-boy for a new generation of war correspondents,’ he’d said. ‘Unbiased, tough. Willing to dive into a story without thinking about his safety, looking for the story behind the story, yet able to push aside emotion to look for the truth...’ Yada, yada, yada...
‘So, again, why is he here?’ Ellie asked.
And, by the way, why do you only call when you want something from me? Oh, wait, you didn’t call. I did! You just sent your boy along, expecting me to accommodate your every whim.
Some things never changed.
‘He was doing an interview with a Somalian warlord who flipped. He was stripped of his cash and credit cards, delivered at gunpoint to a United Nations aid plane leaving for Cape Town and bundled onto it,’ Mitchell Evans said in a clipped voice. ‘I need you to give him a bed.’
Jeez, Dad, do I have a B&B sign tattooed on my forehead?
Ellie, desperate to move beyond her default habit of trying to please her father, tried to say no, but a totally different set of words came out of her mouth. ‘For how long?’
God, she was such a wimp.
‘Well, here’s the thing, sugar-pie...’
Oh, good grief. Her father had a thing. A lifetime with her father had taught her that a thing never worked out in her favour. ‘Jack is helping me write a book on the intimate lives of war reporters—mine included.’
Interesting—but she had no idea what any of this had to do with her. But Mitchell didn’t like being interrupted, so Ellie waited for him to finish.
‘He needs to talk to my family members. I thought he could stay a little while, talk to you about life with me...’
