Lots of Love (18 page)

She rubbed her hot face to gather her thoughts. ‘As you can’t guarantee to do the work personally, I suggest you tell your “work associate” not to bother either. I can cope without you until the house is sold, and I think you can count yourselves lucky that I’m willing to leave it there. I won’t mention what’s happened to my parents, but you won’t be getting a penny more from them.’

Ellen expected them to be sullenly relieved that they’d got away with it. The last thing she expected was vitriol.

Dot launched a full terrier attack. ‘You stuck up little madam!’ she howled. ‘Talk about ungrateful! I’ve worked my fingers to the bone for that mother of yours, and Reg hates that damn garden and the rubbish mower your dad has. You can’t just swan in here like you own the place and sack us!’

Ellen leaped back as the handbag swung.

‘You have no right to talk to us like this, you cow!’ Dot lunged towards her. ‘You wait till my grandson hears about it. Then you’ll be sorry.’

Suddenly a trill voice joined in from an upstairs window: ‘I’m a witness to this! I am videoing it and I shall call the police if it carries on! Do not attempt to enter the store. My husband is locking the doors.’ Ellen looked up to see blonde Lily Lubowski waving a camcorder from the dormer window above the village stores. Below her, Joel’s big round face appeared through the security glass of the door as he obligingly sprang the lock and turned the sign to ‘Closed’, winking cheerfully at Ellen.

Caught off-guard, she didn’t see the handbag flying towards her face until it made impact. Thankfully it contained no more than a bus pass and a house key, but the shock made her jump. She landed inadvertently on one of Dot’s small feet.

‘Owwwww!’

In the ensuing mêlée, Reg sloped off to the pub unnoticed.

‘I saw that, Mrs Wyck! That was assault!’ Lily was screaming. ‘It’s on tape. You can’t get away with it this time.’

‘Shut up, you stupid bitch! She kicked me!’ Dot yelled up at her, then turned to Ellen. ‘You can’t fire us. We need that money. We didn’t know that our Sau – that our
work associate
ain’t been doing his job. He said he’d look after the place, and we took that in good faith. You can’t blame us for that.’

‘I’m afraid that’s not my problem.’ Ellen backed away towards the car.

‘Well, I hope you rot in hell!’ Dot hopped after her. ‘You
and
your posh goodfornothing boyfriend! Stuck-up bitch!’

Ellen jumped back into the Merc, narrowly avoiding being handbagged again, and left Dot standing on the pavement hurling abuse. ‘Sorry about this, Lloyd. Would you mind driving away rather fast?’

‘Certainly.’ He put the car into first gear, only too happy to oblige.

A moment later they were flying past the entrance to the Duck Upstream car park. ‘I’ll drive round the block to put her off the scent,’ he explained, after a glance in the rear view mirror: he was fantasising himself as James Bond staging a getaway from Blofeld, Ellen thought. ‘We don’t want her following us into the restaurant – I never double-date.’

‘Thanks.’ Ellen watched the small figure, still hopping around on the pavement, recede into the distance. Then, as they climbed out of the village on the Hillcote lane, she groaned and sagged back in her seat. ‘That really wasn’t supposed to happen – sorry. I don’t think I’m very good at firing people.’

Lloyd raised an eyebrow, still apparently on his Bond trip. ‘Why did you need to fire them?’

‘Because they weren’t doing their job.’ She looked across at him levelly, but he just smiled.

‘Is that a threat?’ His tone was teasing and flirtatious, his big hunky jaw jutting forward.

‘Depends if you’ve been doing yours,’ she muttered, and turned to look out at the hot evening, wondering how she was going to tackle the garden alone. She badly needed rain. Even after just a week of unbroken sun, the ground had hardened and cracked. She couldn’t hope to get a spade into the earth or pull dock roots from their concrete casing. She was half tempted to ask Lloyd if he’d help – he certainly looked strong enough. Again she was reminded that she only wanted him for his body, and even that urge was waning. It was too hot to get physical.

They drove into the tiny hamlet of Hillcote, which was made up of barely a dozen ancient Cotswold-stone houses clustered around a well. There were chickens wandering free range in the lane and a white goose flapped from an old churn stand. A man watering his garden waved at the Merc and two grey cats watched them impassively from a dry-stone wall. They made Ellen think about poor Fins, fending for himself, not knowing where his home was any more. He hadn’t touched the food she’d put out. She hoped he wasn’t making a bid to return to Cornwall,
Incredible Journey
-style. He should have asked her first – she’d have tagged along with Snorkel.

‘Beautiful round here, isn’t it?’ Lloyd murmured, as they did a U-turn around the well, ready to head back to Oddlode.

‘I prefer the sea,’ she said, glaring at the chickens. Trouble-making species: at least seagulls flew away from Snorkel when she tried to make friends.

‘You like water sports?’ he asked casually.

She nodded, and wondered if he’d spotted the surfboards stacked up in the open barn.

His sugar eyes lit up. ‘In that case . . .’

She almost barrelled into him as he took a sharp left along an unmade lane marked dead end.

Half a mile on they arrived at a set of flashy electric gates, beyond which was a huge old house with lots of sculpted garden. Lloyd stopped the Merc in the gateway and reached for the glovebox.

‘Pear Tree Farm – on our books for just under one and a half million,’ he told her smoothly, a sum he was clearly accustomed to saying as casually as his own telephone number. ‘Unrivalled views, twenty-five acres, equestrian facilities, tennis court, pool and guest cottage. Nice little house. Ah!’ He pulled out a set of keys and pressed a small button on the keyring. A moment later the gates swung open. ‘Want to take a look?’

‘I’m not really in the market for a million-pound house,’ she mumbled, wondering if this was some sort of psychological game-plan to show her that Goose Cottage – precisely half the asking price of Pear Tree Farm – was very grotty by Seaton’s standards.

‘Oh, I’m sure I can talk you round.’ He steered the car through the gates.

Ellen felt uncomfortable. ‘What about the owners?’

‘Abroad on holiday.’ As they cruised along the gravel drive, he pressed a pre-set on the mobile phone that was plugged into a hands-free kit. It rang through on the car’s stereo speakers.

‘Good evening, the Duck Upstream restaurant,’ came a syrupy female reply.

‘Hi, Gina. Lloyd Fenniweather here.’

‘Hi, Lloyd!’

‘Can you keep my table another half an hour or so? I’m so sorry, but we’re going to be late. Unavoidable.’

‘No problem.’

‘You’re a honey.’

God, he was smooth, Ellen thought. He had all the moves off pat. He’d cut the call, cut the engine, grabbed his dark glasses and sauntered round to the passenger door to open it for her in the time it had taken her to undo her seatbelt and reach for the handle.

‘Come and have a look round my favourite little bolthole.’ He made an extravagant gesture as he led her towards the beautiful farmhouse.

Almost knocked sideways by the stuffy heat of the evening, Ellen bestowed a crabby look on the house and then on Lloyd. She guessed that this routine was well practised, and she doubted it was just from showing genuine buyers around Seaton’s most expensive properties. It was probably Lloyd Fenniweather’s secret tactic for seducing women. What better start to a date than to bring the girl to a million-pound house and make her feel like she could own it – and him – in one gorgeous deal?

And Ellen needed working on more than most. She’d had an awful week, was six days into quitting smoking, had just been handbagged in the street, and she really only wanted to grill him about her parents’ cottage. The sexual attraction that had fizzled between them at their first meeting simply wasn’t there this evening – all she felt was over-hot, over-tired, over-stressed irritation at his faked smoothness and his cocky arrogance. ‘I’m not sure this is a very good idea,’ she said, as he unlocked the front door. ‘I don’t want to snoop around someone else’s house. It feels invasive.’ She could almost hear Pheely’s voice crying in her ear, ‘
No! Have a snoop! This is my dream come true
!’

Lloyd looked surprised. Clearly he’d never been refused the opportunity to show off the lifestyle accessories of the rich. ‘It’s for sale.’ He laughed. ‘The owners are used to people snooping around – I’ve shown it to three clients this week.’

But Ellen backed away, gazing up at the pretty sash windows. ‘I’d rather stay outside, thanks.’

‘It has seven bedrooms.’ He raised a suggestive eyebrow. ‘And a huge
water
-bed in the master suite.’

Ellen sucked in one cheek as the sugar-sweet gaze watching her hardened excitedly to rock candy . . . quite possibly along with another part of Lloyd’s very beautiful anatomy.

Water sports. Of course. She’d heard enough jokes over the years to know that the phrase covered all manner of nefarious games. Lloyd Fenniweather wanted to try out the water-bed. Perhaps he meant other water sports too. Had he
really
imagined that he floated her boat that much after she’d spent just ten minutes in a car with him? Well, if he did, he had just burned his own boats and was in very deep water.

‘I’m not interested,’ she told him firmly. ‘I think you got the wrong particulars on this hot property.’

‘Suit yourself.’ He tried to stay super-smooth but allowed a little petulance to creep into his voice. ‘We’ll go to the restaurant.’

‘Hang on.’ Ellen crossed her arms. ‘I think we should go through the Goose Cottage situation while we’re here. We’ve got half an hour and it’s much quieter than a restaurant. Is there a table or bench we can perch on while we talk?’

Super-smooth Lloyd looked decidedly ragged at this, but he managed an on-off smile. ‘If we must – just let me get the file from the car.’

Once he had a smart Seaton’s ring-binder clasped under one arm, he led the way round the side of the house to a high-walled courtyard, which glowed in the evening sun. And as soon as she rounded the corner behind him, Ellen saw a sight that made her feet twitch excitedly in their strappy sandals. At one end, separated by a dividing wall, was a very blue, very sparkly swimming-pool. She sat down at a scorched-teak table positively squirming with the need to take a running jump into it. The seat burned her thighs through her thin skirt, and the suntrap courtyard broiled with ensnared heat. The smell of chlorine and the sound of water lapping into the filters made her feel almost faint.

Lloyd took a seat opposite her, pulled his shades into his hair, widened his white fake smile and crossed his hands on the closed file – back in professional smoothie mode, her recent rejection put to the back of his mind as quickly as a lost sale.

‘Goose Cottage is a curious little property – far more problematic than we had at first anticipated.’ The posh voice purred as soothingly as the lapping pool. ‘We set about marketing it in the belief that it would attract offers like wildfire, even given that we were starting out in January. But it hasn’t.’

‘Why ever not?’ Ellen stared longingly at the pool, imagining the cool sensation of chlorinated water tightening her hot, sweaty pores.

‘Mixture of reasons – no single factor.’ The smile stretched wider and wider. ‘People
have
been interested and there’s an offer still out on it . . .’

‘For two hundred thousand below the asking price!’ Ellen reminded him, dragging her eyes from the pool and finding, to her surprise, that he was reaching across the table and fiddling with one of her friendship bracelets. She snatched away her hand and used it to flip her hair back from her sweaty forehead. The courtyard was like a cauldron.

‘Which makes you wonder if we’ve pitched it a little high,’ he suggested gently. ‘I have suggested this to your parents more than once, but they’re adamant they want the full asking price or as near as dammit.’

Now feeling almost too hot to concentrate on what he was saying, Ellen just huffed. It wasn’t her place to start demanding that Jennifer and Theo ask less for the asset that they hoped would secure their old age.

‘Although exquisitely pretty,’ Lloyd was doing his smooth purring thing again, ‘Goose Cottage really is only four-bedroom max, and that includes two very awkward attic rooms. People expect more house for that money. The bunkhouse steps make it impractical as a granny flat, and the cellars would make great playrooms for kids, but they have the same frightening stone steps and are a fire hazard. These things put off families with elderly relatives or small children. The garden is a huge responsibility, as is blatantly obvious now that your parents’ gardener has – er – given up, shall we say? That puts off weekenders. There’s a paddock with no road access, so anyone who wanted to keep a horse or pony would have to lead it through the garden. These all have to be accounted for in the price.’

Ellen was hardly listening to a word he was saying. She blinked sweat from her eyes and noticed that Lloyd was dripping too. The sugary eyes looked into her face with sweet innocence, only the playful smile hinting at a hidden agenda.

‘I haven’t conducted a viewing in weeks because there simply hasn’t been any interest. Now is Seaton’s busiest time – long, sunny days, kids still at school, bank-holiday weekends.’ He was inching closer across the table, his nose approaching hers as he seemed to sense her frothing over.

Suddenly the sexual energy kicked in again. From nowhere, Ellen found herself fighting a reckless urge to grab him by the scruff of the neck, tow him to the pool, push him in fully dressed and jump in after him. She was craving chlorine, nicotine and the sort of teenage irresponsibility that meant she didn’t have to worry about smarmy, male-model estate agents not selling her parents’ house. She just wanted to swim and play water-polo and be a kid, like she had been with Richard.