Staying at Daisy's (18 page)

‘Quick, get downstairs,’ Tara bellowed, sticking her head round the door of the staff sitting room and making Barney jump. ‘Paula Penhaligon’s husband’s just turned up with a shotgun, he’s going berserk in reception, threatening to blow her brains out!’

Barney leapt instinctively to his feet, his eyes wide with horror. God, this was
terrible
.

‘What?’ He stared at Tara, bewildered, as she stood there in the doorway barring his exit. How could she even
think
of laughing at a time like this?

Oh.

‘Barney, you are so
sweet
.’ Tara was by this time doubled up with laughter. ‘Just the sweetest thing ever. You really would have gone rushing down to save her, wouldn’t you!’

Caught out again. Twice in one day. He’d be the laughing stock of the hotel when this got out.

‘Next time you tell me there’s a madman with a shotgun downstairs, I’ll just stay here and finish my sandwiches,’ Barney said mildly. ‘And when he shoots you, you’ll be sorry.’

‘I know, I know. But Rocky told me what you’d told him and I couldn’t resist it.’ Wiping her eyes, Tara went on, ‘I’ve just been up to Paula Penhaligon’s suite. You big dingbat, she hasn’t been beaten up.’

‘She has.’ Barney nodded vigorously. ‘I saw her in daylight. Her eyes were all bruised and swollen.’

‘But mysteriously wrinkle-free,’ Tara finished for him. ‘Barney, she’s had a face-lift. That’s why she’s come down here, dummy. To recuperate.’

‘A face-lift?’ Barney was both shocked and relieved. At least it meant Paula Penhaligon wasn’t being beaten up. It still seemed strange to him, though, that anyone would willingly choose to undergo surgery just to improve their looks.

‘She’s forty-eight and back on the market. It’s something to give the old confidence a boost. She’s after a new man.’ Tara winked. ‘You never know, a pretty boy like you could be right up her street.’

‘You’re not going to catch me out a third time,’ said Barney. Abruptly another thought struck him. ‘And you won’t tell Daisy about the shotgun thing, will you? I don’t want her thinking I’m completely stupid.’

Tara watched him silently pleading with her. What a sweetie; he was genuinely worried.

‘You were ready to defend one of our guests from a madman with a gun,’ she marveled. ‘Daisy would be
impressed
.’

‘Please don’t say anything.’

Taking pity on him, Tara relented. ‘OK, I promise. In exchange for one little thing.’

‘What little thing?’ Barney was wary of her now, but sadly not wary enough to guard the remains of his lunch.

‘Yum, tuna and mayonnaise, my favorite.’ Whisking the last sandwich from his plate, she took a huge bite.

Barney pointed to the bottles of anti-rejection medication on the coffee table in front of him. ‘I crushed up my tablets and mixed them in with the tuna.’

Oh God, how
awful
. Horrified, Tara began to splutter and choke. She spat half the mouthful messily into her cupped hand.

‘Not really,’ said Barney with an angelic grin.

***

Hector’s favorite walk in the hotel’s grounds was the wooded path along the riverbank. The snowdrops and crocuses were poking their way through the ground. Soon, the hazel bushes would dance with catkins and the bluebells would be making an appearance. By April they would cover the lower reaches of the hill with a blue haze and creamy white blossom would sprout on the hawthorn bushes overhanging the river. Heaving a sigh of absolute contentment, Hector thought how right he’d been to buy this place. How anyone could choose to live in a filthy city was genuinely beyond him.

In the pocket of his Barbour, his mobile phone rang. Just once.

Looking at the screen, he smiled. This was the system he and Maggie had evolved. If it wasn’t a good moment, he would leave it at that and she would understand. If the coast was clear, he’d call her back.

Since the coast couldn’t be much clearer than it was now, he pressed out her number. For security reasons, it wasn’t even logged in the phone’s memory.

‘Hi.’ Maggie sounded both harassed and relieved. ‘You won’t believe the rotten morning I’ve had.’

Hector smiled. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Let’s just say if you turn on the evening news and hear that a big bomb’s gone off at the HQ of Carver’s Superstore, you’ll know who planted it.’

‘I’ve told you already—’

‘And I’ve told you, you’re not buying me another one. Anyway, I’ve just finished a mountain of hand-washing,’ Maggie went on, ‘and Tara won’t be home before five. I just wondered what you were doing.’

Hector hesitated. Maggie was clearly in need of cheering up and he’d like to see her but, being brutally honest here, he wasn’t in the mood right now for sex. This morning’s round of golf with Josh had left him with a painful twinge in his back. And, their arrangement being as it was, it wouldn’t seem right to pay Maggie a visit and not sleep with her. He would feel as if he were short-changing her. She might be offended. Once a business relationship was established, it made sense to keep to the rules.

‘Actually, I’m pretty tied up.’ Hector spoke with regret, twisting his body from side to side to double-check that twinge. Ouch, still there. ‘But tomorrow afternoon should be OK,’ he added with confidence. His back would definitely be better by then.

‘Tomorrow?’ He heard the disappointment in Maggie’s voice and for a moment felt emotionally torn. But that was stupid, Hector reminded himself. Theirs wasn’t an emotional relationship.

He cleared his throat. ‘Say around two o’clock?’

‘The thing is, an Australian couple are dropping by at some stage to pick up their cushions. They weren’t able to give me an exact time.’ Maggie sounded frustrated. ‘If they’re here at one o’clock, fine. But they might not turn up till four.’

‘OK, OK.’ Hector’s tone was soothing. ‘Don’t worry about it. Fingers crossed, they’ll be early. As soon as the coast’s clear, give me a ring.’ As he said it, he heard the sound of bushes rustling ahead. ‘Look, I have to go. I’ll speak to you tomorrow. Bye.’

The phone was switched off and back in his pocket in an instant. In a village like Colworth you could never be too careful; one slip and their shameful secret would be out.

Hector knew it shouldn’t be shameful, but somehow it was.

The bushes rustled again as whoever it was made their way along the narrow, overgrown path towards him. The next moment, he heard someone gasp and let out a muted cry.

Don’t say he’d stumbled across a couple indulging in alfresco sex? Surely not. It was February—far too cold for such foolhardy behavior.

God, thought Hector, I’m getting old.

Then he heard the words, ‘Oh, sod it, get
off
me,’ uttered by a female with irritation rather than fear, followed by, ‘You bloody,
bloody
thing.’

Rounding the bend in the path, Hector saw an elegant redhead wrestling inelegantly with a blackberry bush. A long spiky tentacle was wrapped round her left leg like a noose and in bending down to free herself, the end of her cream scarf had managed to get itself entangled with another branch further up. Startled by the sight of Hector, the woman eyed him warily for a moment, then heaved a sigh of defeat.

‘God, I hope you’re not paparazzi. If you’ve got a camera on you, that’s my street cred gone for good.’

‘You’re in luck.’ Hector broke into a grin. ‘I’m the world’s most useless photographer. Even if I did have a camera, I’d forget to remove the lens cap. Here, lean on my shoulder,’ he added, bending down and lifting her left foot off the ground. ‘The more you struggle, the tighter it’ll get.’

‘Now I feel like a horse having its hooves checked,’ the woman complained good-naturedly. ‘Ouch, mind my ankle.’

It took a while, but at last Hector managed to free her. Once the bramble had been disentangled from her stockinged leg, he released the scarf from the higher branches.

‘God.’ Paula Penhaligon shook her head. ‘It was like being attacked by a triffid. And I thought I came down here to relax.’

She was wearing hopelessly impractical shoes. Her pale stockings were in tatters. ‘Jeans and walking boots might be an idea next time,’ said Hector.

‘There won’t be a next time, I can promise you that.’

‘Come on now, that’s the coward’s way out.’ Reaching over, he picked a scrap of crispy, freeze-dried bramble leaf out of her hair. ‘If you fall off a horse, the first thing you have to do is get back in the saddle.’

‘I really don’t think the countryside’s my thing.’ Paula Penhaligon touched her head defensively—removing the leaf from her hair had been a curiously intimate gesture, but seeing as he’d already been grappling around her ankles she could hardly protest now. ‘Thanks for helping me out, but I’m just going to head back to the hotel.’

‘You’ve only just got here,’ Hector chided. ‘You aren’t giving the place a chance, and there’s so much to see.’

‘Such enthusiasm.’ Her tone was dry. ‘I suppose that’s why you stay here, to commune with the wonders of nature.’ Eyeing his battered Barbour, thick corduroys, and green Hunter wellies, she added, ‘You are a guest at the hotel?’

‘Actually I’m not. But I do love this place.’ He gestured at the view through the tangle of bare branches bordering the river. ‘Which is why I can’t bear the thought of you rushing back to London to tell all your smart city friends what a hateful time you had here. Did you bring
any
flat shoes with you, by the way?’

Paula hesitated. He seemed charming and he was certainly attractive, but she hadn’t the faintest idea who he was.

Prevaricating, she said, ‘Why?’

‘Because if you did you could change into them. Then I’d take you for a nice easy walk—break you in gently, as it were.’ His brown eyes twinkled. ‘And maybe after that we could have a spot of afternoon tea.’

This was hard. Did he live in the village? Was he someone she could trust? It would have been nice to hook up with a genial fellow guest, but this was another matter altogether. What if he turned out to be one of those over-eager types, the kind who latched on to you, earnestly declaring themselves your greatest fan?

‘I don’t think so,’ Paula announced. ‘But thanks for the offer.’

‘Fine. No problem.’ He smiled easily, taking the rejection in his stride. ‘But if you don’t mind, I’ll walk with you back to the hotel. You might want to put some antiseptic on that ankle of yours as well.’ The bramble scratches on her left leg were bleeding.

Paula said, ‘You don’t have to walk back with me.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not doing you a favor. I was planning to have a drink or two in the bar.’

Maybe he was the village drunk, charming but unemployable, an alcoholic who idled away his days tramping around the countryside between wild drinking bouts. During her years in the theatre, she’d known plenty of people like that. Still, he had rescued her from the clutches of that blackberry bush.

As they made their way back across the stone bridge, Paula said curiously, ‘Do you know who I am?’

‘You mean apart from the woman who abhors nature?’ His eyes crinkled at the corners. ‘I may look like a yokel, but my head isn’t entirely stuffed with straw.’

By the time they reached the entrance to the hotel, she had learned that he was retired, keen on golf, and fond of playing the piano. When he had bluntly inquired about the faint bruising around her eyes, she’d explained how she had walked straight into a piece of scenery backstage.

‘Well, this is where we go our separate ways.’ Her genial rescuer indicated the bar to their left. ‘It’s been nice meeting you. If you feel like joining me later, don’t be shy.’

Paula gave the man her best professional smile. Clearly, he was settling in for a serious afternoon session. As for joining him later when he was three sheets to the wind, well, she’d rather dive head first into a bramble hedge.

And, frankly, she felt the hotel’s standards must be slipping pretty drastically if they allowed visitors to wander into the bar in wellingtons. Even the posh green kind.

To her relief, the reception area had been empty when they’d come in. Now, the door to the manager’s office swung open.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ Daisy MacLean stared at the pair of them in dismay, her gaze instantly taking in Paula’s shredded stockings and bleeding leg. ‘Dad, I can’t leave you alone for five minutes. What on earth have you done to our very important guest?’

***

Upstairs, Paula changed out of her ludicrously inappropriate town clothes. Well, she hadn’t known they were ludicrous at the time; when she’d set out on her walk, she had naturally assumed the paths around the hotel would be tarmacked.

Now, wearing narrow leather trousers and an angora sweater and with her makeup carefully redone, she entered the bar.

Hector MacLean was already there, having more speedily swapped his countryman’s outfit for a smart green and black striped shirt, black trousers, and highly polished handmade shoes. He was sitting at one of the window tables with a pot of coffee on a tray before him.

‘You lied,’ Paula announced as he rose to greet her.

‘Actually, I didn’t. You asked me if I was a guest.’

‘OK, you misled me. Why didn’t you tell me you owned this hotel?’

Hector poured black coffee into her cup. ‘You’d have found out soon enough. I just fancied going incognito for a while, seeing if I could get by on personality alone.’ He glanced up, his smile rueful. ‘Except, sadly, it seems not.’

‘That’s unfair. I thought you were a drunk. I also thought you seemed a very nice person,’ Paula hastily added.

‘But I’m a lot nicer now you know I own this place. Or at least you’re prepared to join me in the bar,’ said Hector. ‘And I could still be a hopeless drunk,’ he reminded her. ‘You don’t know me well enough to say I’m not.’

‘You invented Dennis the Dachshund, that’s good enough for me.’ Paula smiled. ‘I used to read those books to my nephew when he was small.’

‘What I want to know is, can I persuade you to come out for a proper walk with me this afternoon?’ Eyeing her boots, with their modest heels, Hector said, ‘I’m still determined to convert you to the glories of nature.’