Private Lives. Carole Mortimer
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deep in thought,’ he dismissed impatiently. ‘I didn’t hear you arrive at all; you could have given me a heart attack, creeping about like that,’ he accused hardly.
Surely it wasn’t her fault that he hadn’t heard her! And she knew what she would like to give him!
Oh, goodness, this second visit, meant to be a conciliatory one, was turning out to be as much of a mistake as the first one had been!
‘Gail rang and left a message for me.’ She deliberately kept her voice light as she tried to salvage the situation by explaining her reason for being here now at all. ‘She told me that you’re here on a visit,’ Fin smiled.
His mouth twisted with hard mockery. ‘I already knew my reason for being here!’
He certainly wasn’t about to make this easy for her! ‘But, as you may recall, I didn’t,’ Fin pointed out softly, determined not to allow him to force her into losing her temper. Then they would really be in trouble!
He shrugged, as if her lack of knowledge concerning his presence here really wasn’t his problem, his expression scathing. ‘And now you do,’ he dismissed, looking at her expectantly.
And, now that she had had her say, he wanted her to leave again, his gaze told her. He really was the rudest man she had ever had the misfortune to meet!
Fin straightened, any feelings of a need to be friendly towards this man, because Gail had asked her to, and because he was a stranger to the area and she would truly have liked to make him welcome, fading rapidly at his continued rudeness. Obviously he didn’t want to feel welcome, just wanted to be left alone with his rudeness. Well, that was easily arranged!
She turned to leave, but a loyalty to Gail made her hesitate slightly, to try to reach him just once more. ‘If there is anything you need during your stay here—–’
‘I’ll contact the Little People.’ He acknowledged the offer with a derisive inclination of his head. ‘Although I don’t really see the occasion arising,’ he added arrogantly.
Neither did Fin. In fact, she hoped it didn’t, didn’t particularly want to see this man ever again, not least because of his disturbing resemblance to that other man from the past. ‘I’ll leave you in peace, then,’ she said in abrupt farewell.
His mouth quirked, dark brows raised over mocking eyes the colour of aquamarine. ‘Now that would be a novelty!’ he drawled without even attempting to hide his sarcasm.
Fin knew, without needing to look in a mirror, that her freckles would be standing out lividly against the sudden redness of her face. But at that moment she didn’t care about how she looked, was fighting a battle within herself to hold on to her temper. Like a lot of red-haired people, when she lost her temper it was like Guy Fawkes Night and the Fourth of July fireworks all going off at the same time. It didn’t happen very often, thank goodness, but this man was pushing her to the limits of her politeness; she had never been treated with such derision in her life before!
She drew in several deep breaths of air before even attempting to speak. ‘You will find, Mr Danvers …’ she spoke in carefully controlled tones, relieved to find that terrible tide of anger she had felt wash over her beginning to fade; she had never lost her temper with a client yet, even if some of them could be a little difficult. But, strictly speaking, Jake Danvers wasn’t her client, he was just staying in the house of someone who was, and if the worst came to the worst she would take comfort from that knowledge before she ripped into him! ‘… that we are a pretty friendly crowd in this area, and—–’
‘And Gail assured me you also respect a person’s privacy!’ he cut in harshly.
Fin bit back the retort she had been about to make to the accusation, thinking, really thinking, about what he was saying to her. Discretion and quiet efficiency were attributes that were clearly promised by her service, and at the moment she was breaking one of her own rules and staying here when she clearly wasn’t wanted. And that was unforgivable.
She nodded abruptly. ‘That’s true too,’ she bit out tautly, so tense that she felt her back begin to ache. ‘Enjoy your stay in the area, Mr Danvers,’ she added with a formal politeness that had to be forced.
‘I intend to,’ he drawled condescendingly, his gaze sweeping over her with mocking pity, his stance one of pure challenge still.
Fin turned away with a sharp intake of her breath, conscious of that aqua-coloured gaze on her the whole of the time it took her to walk back to the van—and it seemed to take forever!
What an insufferable man! She didn’t care who he was, he had no right to treat her or anyone else in that arrogantly dismissive way that didn’t just border on being insulting but definitely was!
And she intended settling the matter of just who he was at the earliest opportunity, and had the proof one way or the other in her bedroom at home. Maybe she should have gone home earlier and done that before making this second visit to him; if what she suspected was true then she might have at least had some ammunition of her own to throw at him among all his insulting behaviour! But in a way she didn’t want her suspicion confirmed, knew things would be much easier if Jake Danvers was exactly who he said he was!
In the meantime she had to meet Derek for lunch, and the last thing she wanted was to be late for that; God knew, she was going to get enough hassle from him once he knew about the committee meeting this evening!
‘No, it’s not on, Fin,’ he reacted with predictable stubbornness when she told him about the meeting once they had eaten their sandwich lunch in the café they usually frequented for that meal. She had thought he might take the news of their broken date better on a full stomach; she had been wrong, and his handsome face flushed with his displeasure.
As Derek was tall and blond, with rugged Robert Redford-like good looks, Fin had tried, on several occasions, to convince him of how wonderful he would look up on stage himself. All to no avail. He didn’t believe, as a respectable accountant, that he should make himself conspicuous in that way, certainly didn’t believe his clients would have much respect for someone who made such a public exhibition of themselves. Fin’s ‘clients’ were apparently a different matter entirely!
As her accountant, which was how the two of them had first come to meet, he knew she only earnt a comfortable living doing what she did. In fact, on more than one occasion in the past he had accused her of merely playing at working. With walking the Siamese cat on its lead as her first job directly after lunch, Fin wasn’t so sure that he wasn’t right.
‘My mother telephoned this morning and invited us both to dinner tonight, and as we already had a date for this evening I felt confident in accepting for both of us,’ Derek continued reproachfully.
Then he shouldn’t have done, was Fin’s first thought, not when his invitation had been to take her out for a meal. But she knew she owed a lot of her reaction to still feeling disgruntled from her conversation with Jake Danvers earlier, that she normally wouldn’t have felt this resentment; she liked Derek’s parents, had always got on well with them. But Jake Danvers’s rudeness had upset her, and she had come straight from that encounter to lunch with Derek.
It was because she knew that Derek’s presumption in accepting the invitation for both of them wasn’t really the reason she felt so irritated that she tried to answer in a reasoning tone. ‘And usually I would be pleased to go, you know that,’ she placated. ‘But tonight’s meeting really is an emergency.’
Derek looked at her exasperatedly. ‘More important even than our relationship?’ he challenged sharply.
The two of them had been seeing each other fairly regularly for almost six months now, and, while she didn’t feel any wild racing of her pulse, or a deep yearning to spend every minute of every day with Derek, she did enjoy his company, and the dates they had together; apart from Derek’s resentment towards her interest in amateur dramatics, they actually had a lot in common, and she had to admit that the idea had crossed her mind that Derek might one day ask her to marry him. But his question