The Alpha Male. Madeleine Ker
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her. ‘Please call me Ryan,’ he said coolly. ‘And I won’t forget to come back. I’m sorry to leave so abruptly. My timing is a little off key lately. I hope you’ll get used to it.’
‘Oh,’ Ariadne said, ‘we can work around your schedule, I’m sure!’
Ryan nodded his thanks, then stared into Penny’s eyes. His gaze was intense. ‘I’ll get back in touch. And when I do, I will want an explanation, Penny.’
His broad shoulders, snugly clad in sheepskin, swung through the door. It slammed shut.
Ariadne hurried to the blind to peer out. ‘Look at that car! My God! Sex on wheels!’
‘It’s just a car, Ariadne,’ Penny replied wearily.
‘I’m not talking about the car, baby.’ She watched as the sports car accelerated away, then turned to Penny with bright eyes. ‘I never met anyone who was truly magnetic before. But that man is! If I was a bunch of iron filings I’d be coating him in a fine layer!’
‘You practically were,’ Penny retorted.
‘It’s going to be such fun working for him! Why are you so anti?’
Ariadne tilted her head on one side. ‘You know him, don’t you?’ she said, her eyes narrowing to green slits. ‘He didn’t just walk off the street at eight o’clock in the morning. Who is he?’
‘He’s nobody.’ Tension was slowly ebbing out of her. The shock of being with Ryan after nearly twelve months of separation—and all that had happened in that time—had left her feeling weak. She sat behind the desk and rested her forehead in her hand, feeling nauseous.
‘Oh, yes, he’s nobody, all right,’ Ariadne said scornfully. ‘The most wonderful hunk to ever set foot in this staid old town, and he’s nobody? Who are you trying to kid?’
Penny looked up at Ariadne. Though Ariadne was practically a partner in the business, and a good friend, she knew nothing about her time in London or any of its consequences. She didn’t know a thing about Ryan, about their break-up, about the encephalitis or the miscarriage.
And if she knew what Ryan’s world was like, and the nature of the ‘wonderfully interesting people’ he was likely to bring to this staid old town, she would be even more stupidly infatuated with him.
‘I knew him some time ago,’ she said tersely. ‘It ended badly. That’s all.’
‘I knew it!’ Ariadne exulted. ‘And now he’s come back to find you?’
‘I think it’s just a horrible coincidence,’ she lied.
Ariadne gave Penny a shrewd look. ‘He’s rich, right?’
‘When I knew him, he was very rich,’ Penny confirmed.
‘So when he throws a dinner party, it’s really a big occasion?’
Penny made a face. ‘Yes.’
‘And he’s going to do this every week? Honey, whatever happened between you and him, we can’t afford to turn down that kind of money! We’ve got bills to pay, remember? Light, rent, flowers, the vehicles?’
‘I remember,’ Penny said, pressing her fingers into her eyes.
‘So when he comes back to you—you are going to say a big yes, aren’t you?’
Penny got up and walked out of the back. ‘We’ve got work to do. Let’s see these cream gladioli you’ve bought.’
‘You will, won’t you?’ Ariadne pressed, catching up with Penny. ‘You will say yes to the money?’
‘Money is nice, isn’t it?’ Penny said, swinging the back door of the van open to reveal a colourful mountain of fresh flowers. ‘But it depends what you have to do for it in return. Sometimes the price is just too high. Come on, we’re late already, and we’ve got a lot of work to do.’
Ryan’s arrival that morning had released a flood of memories and emotions that she’d been valiantly holding back behind some mental dam deep within herself. Though the day was so busy that she hardly had a moment to draw breath, Penny thought about him every second. Thought about what had existed between them, what they had shared and lost.
Most of all, she thought about the expression in his eyes when he’d accused her of aborting their child.
Naturally, he would see it like that.
It was true that she had made that horrible threat. But of course she’d never had any intention of ever carrying it out! She’d been desperate, and could think of no other threat that would stop him from following her. What had happened to her had seemed like a fateful punishment—though she’d already been sick with the brain inflammation that had almost killed her when she’d said those words.
Why had her letter never reached him? She remembered writing it.
When he didn’t reply, or come to her, she’d just assumed that he had been unable to forgive what she’d done.
That his silence was his answer.
But in those agonised days after she’d been discharged from St Cyprian’s, her mind had not been working properly. Perhaps she had never posted it. Perhaps even writing it had been a dream.
Certainly, Ryan had never come to her, though she had thought he would. She had been so alone, with no comfort and no hope.
He had not come, and she had moved on.
Now, as she worked busily in the banqueting hall, she reflected on how far she had travelled since those dark days. Penny had been determined that her previous life would just cease to exist, that she would make a brand-new start. And that was what she had achieved.
She was never going to be so madly unhappy again.
She looked down the high table with a critical eye. Everything looked beautiful! Each place setting was a work of art. Tara was still setting out the individual vases of flowers. Penny had made them low and wide, so they wouldn’t be knocked over easily, and so that Her Worship’s guests wouldn’t have to peer round them to talk to each other.
The big arrangements that flanked the tables had turned out spectacular, even though the yellow gladioli she had envisioned had been toned down to a more subtle cream.
And everything went perfectly with the big centrepiece she had set up in the square formed by the four long tables. That space was to have been left empty, but at the last minute she’d had a brainwave. She was particularly proud of that.
The mayor and her private secretary bustled in now to take a last look. Her Worship was a diminutive, fiercely energetic woman who prided herself on her modern views—which was why, Penny suspected, she had chosen a newcomer to do her banquet, rather than one of the well-established, but old-fashioned, town florists.
‘It’s exquisite!’ she enthused, patting Penny on the shoulder. ‘Truly magnificent, Miss Watkins. That centrepiece is wonderful!’
‘Thank you,’ Penny smiled.
‘A perfect autumnal note,’ the mayor went on. ‘The bare branches giving a home to new life, the old nurturing the new—it’s quite an illustration of my mayoralty, don’t you think, Daphne?’
‘Absolutely, Your Worship,’ the obsequious secretary chimed, her timing as perfect as a Swiss clock.
‘Very original, Penny,’ the mayor affirmed. ‘I don’t know where you creative people get all your ideas!’
Hippy Dave had helped with this one, though she could scarcely tell the mayor that; for the spectacular centrepiece was none other than the dead tree that he had brought to her workshop that morning.
Penny had attacked it with a saw borrowed from Miles Clampett, had trimmed it into a more elegant shape, then had decorated the bare branches with birds’ nests—each nest containing