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Itshouldhave been a short conversation—Anna didn’tknowanything—but so far she’d been here two hours. The coffee break suggested she might be here longer. By then, she mused grimly, she might believe she was guilty too.
The first inkling she’d had of the craziness to come was seeing her grandfather’s name as she flicked through the news sites before she headed out to treat herself to an outfit for her new job.
International aid agency at the centre of a scandal...accusations of money laundering and facilitating modern slavery!
That was when her phone had started ringing. Journalists asking her for a quote, and others asking her leading questions, such as did she feel guilty that her lifestyle had been funded by the most poor and needy in society?
She had made the mistake of responding a couple of times before someone had repeated her response...‘“My grandfather is totally innocent. This is a terrible mistake,”’ adding, ‘Can I quote you on that?’
When the police had rung she had almost let it ring out, which would, she assumed, have meant the policemen waiting in the car outside would have come knocking on her door, though they had come inside anyway to escort her through the nightmare walk of shame.
She shuddered. Every time she closed her eyes she could still see the flashing lights, and the voices, they were playing in her head like a background white noise. They were the things nightmares were made of...other people’s nightmares.
‘This is so surreal!’ she said to the wall, her commentary cut short when a policeman appeared.
‘Can I show you the way out, Miss Randall?’
She jumped and almost knocked her chair over as she leapt like a startled deer to her feet. ‘I can go?’
Quick now, Anna, before he changes his mind.
‘You know now this is all some terrible mistake!’
The plain-clothes policeman didn’t respond to her comment, just looked at her as though he’d heard it all before and from people who were better liars than she was. Was there such a thing as being so innocent you looked guilty?
‘Your lawyer has explained the situation,’ he said. ‘He and your...friendare waiting for you.’
Anna hardly noticed the faint hesitation before he saidfriend—she had friends, but she definitely didn’t have a lawyer and actually her best friend, Sara, was suffering from a broken heart and had thrown herself into work and moved to Paris. And Penny was looking after her sister’s three children while her sister was convalescing from a fall that had left her in plaster.
There was her mum, who was frequently taken for her better-looking, better-dressed big sister, but her mum wasdefinitelynot the sort of person to stop what she was doing and come to the rescue. The last time she had made contact she had been in another time zone.
It was a real mystery.
The mystery was solved when she stepped past the policeman into an open lobby that was deserted apart from a uniformed senior policewoman who was deep in conversation with a slim young man in a sharp suit who was making her laugh.
Anna barely glanced at them. Her stare had zeroed in on the tall, dramatically dark fallen-angel figure radiating impatience who stood a little apart and was not engaged in the charm offensive.
He was wearing the same things she had seen him in the previous day, but they were now creased, and the tie was gone. His hair was tousled and his jaw and hollow cheeks covered in a dark stubble, that, along with the glitter in his cerulean eyes, added to the combustible charge in the air around him.
He looked dark, dangerous, disreputable and totally in charge.
‘You!’She looked around, her hair whiplashing around her face as she searched for the person who wasreallygoing to rescue her. The odd feeling in the pit of her stomach told her there wasn’t going to be anyone else—or something else entirely might be responsible for theoddfeeling. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Cara...finally!’
He was beside her in less time than it took Anna to blink, and she couldn’t speak now, her vocal cords were frozen, the glitter in his eyes making her head spin as the long fingers of his right hand slid around the nape of her neck, tilting her face up to him.
He is going to kiss me!
And then he did, a hard, hungry kiss that sent heat pumping through her body and then, without his mouth lifting from hers, the kiss seamlessly expanded to a slow sensual assault on her senses. His mouth, tongue and lips made the journey along her lower lip, tasting and kissing, while he watched her face as she stood, shocked into compliant stillness.
Until stillness was not enough, and she had leaned into him, kissing him back. The abruptness with which he released her made her rock a little on her heels.
Frustration that she was deeply ashamed of clawed low in her belly as, like an automaton, she reacted to the hand in the small of her back guiding her through the big double doors and out into a small courtyard. Her glazed, shocked glance took in her surroundings: some sort of parking area, high walls on three sides; the double gates on the fourth were open.
It was empty apart from one long low limo with blackout windows. As they emerged so did the driver, who walked around to the boot and pulled out a bicycle.
‘What are you doing?’More to the question what amIdoing?‘You kissed me!’ she accused.
