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There was a heavy sigh, then, ‘That’s OK. But, Miss Halstead…’ He eyed her minutely, assessingly, from the top of her head to her thighs, then down over her shapeliness, outlined plainly beneath the stretch fabric of her nightdress, to her tightly curling toes. ‘Nevernever do that to me again…’
Lauren fled.
Lauren stared through the kitchen window, listening to the kettle coming to the boil. The flowers glowed, the lawn radiated light. In the brilliant morning sun the cedar tree looked less intimidating, throwing its shadow away from the house.
The kitchen, as Marie had declared, possessed all the ‘mod cons’ a girl could want, but their modernity was in stark contrast to the roughly plastered stone walls, the oak dresser displaying blue and white crockery and the old-fashioned iron stove which had been left in place.
Should she, or shouldn’t she, Lauren wondered, consult her guest about breakfast? Guest? she asked herself. Well, she could hardly think of him as ‘the stranger’, could she, now that she knew his name, not to mention other—well, things about him? The colour in her cheeks came and went at the thought.
She climbed the stairs again, but outside his room she hesitated, then her knuckles knocked tentatively on the solid wood door. She opened it on hearing a weary, ‘Please enter.’
He lay back in a low chair, dressed, she noted to her relief, in jeans and an open-necked shirt. He looked washed out.
‘How are you feeling now, Mr Carmichael?’
Broad shoulders lifted and fell. ‘I think the fever’s passed, but I feel lousy.’
‘Would you—would you like some breakfast?’
‘Thanks, no.’ Then his head lifted and his gaze skated with male appreciation over her casual clothes—wellwashed jeans and a cotton top which, to her annoyance, no matter how baggy it became with wear, could not hide her shapeliness.
So he was OK in that specific area of his life, she thought with some amusement.
‘Tea—cup of? Any chance?’ he asked, letting his head fall back again.
‘Of course.’ She swung to the door. ‘I’ll go and make it’
‘Call and I’ll come.’
The faintly mocking note made her turn. Fever or no fever, there was no mistaking the glint in his eyes, and her inner self cautioned, Oh, no, you don’t, Mr Carmichael. Then, more insistently, Oh, no, you don’t, Lauren Halstead.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_d52f3472-3f8e-5d7a-8885-2f4f66fae80c)
HE DID come at her call, one slow step after the other. He dropped into an upright chair at the scrupulously scrubbed wooden table then looked around m a lacklustre way, wrapping his hands around the mug of tea which Lauren had put in front of him.
How long, she wondered, did he intend to stay? It was a question she could not yet ask of this man who, even now, was far from well.
Catching the browned bread as it jumped from the toaster, she spread it with butter and sat on the other wooden chair.
‘How was it,’ she asked, as much out of curiosity as to fill the taut silence, ‘that you turned up in the garden of Old Cedar Grange?’
Carefully, precisely, he lowered the mug to the table, as if the movement gave him time to process his thoughts.
At last he said, ‘I knocked at the front doorhammered would be a better description—but over the racket no one heard, so I did the only sensible thing and found my way to the rear.’
She nodded, chewing thoughtfully. ‘But why?’ She had to ask. ‘Why here?’
There was another long pause. Had the fever, she wondered, slowed his mental processes? But there was no lack of brightness in his eyes, no absence of spontaneity in his reactions.
‘I had a drink at the local pub,’ he answered at last, ‘and asked if they had any accommodation available. No room at the inn—but there was a house on the edge of the village, they told me, with plenty of empty rooms. A girl by the name of Marie Brownley lived there with her fiancé. She was looking after it in the owner’s absence. They said she might put me up.’
He took a frowning mouthful of tea. He was choosing his words again. Lauren sensed it. ‘Hence my appearance unannounced in the rear grounds of the property.’ His mouth curved in his first real smile, and Lauren’s heart lurched drunkenly at the transformation of his features.
‘Totally unarmed,’ he added. ‘As you’ve no doubt discovered after going through my belongings.’
Lauren smiled too. ‘Sorry about the invasion into your backpack privacy. And the “might have a gun” nonsense.’
His shoulders lifted. ‘My apologies, too, for collapsing in the garden. I only flew in from South America yesterday morning. The fever, plus jet lag, caught up with me.’ He straightened in the chair. It had plainly been an effort for him even to do that. ‘I should leave here.’ He glanced at her. ‘Any chance of public transport?’
‘In which direction?’
His shoulders lifted heavily. ‘Any which way.’
Lauren was swept by a curious disappointment. She didn’t want the man to leave, which worried her, but then she rationalised her feelings. He was company; his presence was stopping her from feeling lonely in this big house, that was all.
She was puzzled, too, by his apparent inability to make up his mind as to his eventual destination. ‘I could take you to the nearest town. Where would you want to go?’
His answer was a shake of the head, a lift of the shoulders—all with his eyes closed.
‘Mr Carmichael…’ She had intended to sound firm, in order to penetrate the mists which appeared to be clouding his mind, but her voice held a strange tremor. ‘You’re not in a fit state to go anywhere.’
His glance at her was direct, almost speculative. He must have heard that vocal tremor and be trying to analyse its cause. He’d be clever if he found it, she thought ruefully, because she didn’t know that herself.
‘You’d allow me to stay another night?’
‘However long it takes for you to get well again.’
Her words surprised even herself. The statement had almost been an open invitation to stay as long as he liked. Also, her own reaction was puzzling her. It had nothing to do with the man, she told herself, with the charisma he undoubtedly possessed even m an unfit state, the magnetism in his deeply intelligent eyes, the deep-down reflex action of her feminine responses to his masculinity every time he was near.
No! It was because she was sorry for him—plainly brought low, as he was, by circumstances and illness. It was compassion, wasn’t it…? Wasn’t it? her brain persisted.
An eyebrow arched. ‘You have it in your power to play hostess to an uninvited guest? Moreover, to someone who, twenty-four hours ago, you didn’t know even existed?’
But she had known, hadn’t she? Although how, she could not explain at all.
‘If you mean would the owner mind if I took you in, I very much doubt it.’
‘As a paying guest?’
Paying? The thought of payment hadn’t occurred to her. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Payment to the owner, not to me. I spoke to him earlier this morning and he seemed a very nice man.’
‘He did? Have you ever met him?’
‘How could I have? I only took over from Mane last night. Anyway, he’s her uncle—or quasi-uncle.’
‘Quasi.’ He rolled the word around his tongue. ‘I like that. Seemingly, almost, but not really.’
Lauren smiled, glad that he appeared to be reviving a little. ‘You’re talking like a dictionary.’
His own smile was faint. ‘Dictionaries and I are on very familiar terms.’
So what was he? A teacher needing accurate interpretations? A lawyer requiring precise definitions? She didn’t like to ask, and anyway it was no business of hers. Even if he stayed a while, he would leave some time in the near future. After all, he had to earn a living somehow.
Holding onto the chair, he rose carefully. ‘You could be right. Maybe I’m not in a fit condition to go anywhere.’ He had lost the hint of colour he’d seemed to gain from drinking the hot liquid.
‘Except—’ she pushed away her empty mug and stood too ‘—to bed.’
His lips quirked. ‘My hostess is ordering me to bed? In other circumstances that might have been a promising start.’
She could not help smiling into the silence that was left as he made his way upstairs, at the same time shaking her head.
Now that he had gone, Lauren went up to the room she now regarded as her studio and attempted to bring some order to the various pieces of artists’ equipment that she used m her work.
Pausing for a while, she leaned on the windowsill and gazed down into the gardens, admiring the colourful scene, her eyes drawn again to the terracotta heads that were placed at random across the wide-spreading grounds.
The ring of the telephone interrupted her reverie, and she hurned downstairs to answer it before it disturbed the sleeping stranger.
‘Hi,’ said Casey, ‘everything OK? I wanted to call earlier, but I was sent out on an assignment.’ He really loves that word, Lauren reflected with a smile. ‘Has the man from nowhere been behaving himself?’
‘He couldn’t do otherwise,’ Lauren pointed out. ‘He’s still weak from the illness he’s had. Anyway—’ she frowned as her conscience pricked her ‘—last night I locked him in his room.’
There was a burst of laughter from the other end. ‘Full marks to you, Lauren. What happened?’
‘You mean, when he discovered it?’ She could not tell him the whole truth. ‘He roared like a caged lion. Well, you know what I mean. Anyway, he’s in bed again.’
‘How long’s he staying?’
‘I—’ She hesitated, then decided to continue. ‘I more or less told him to stay for as long as it takes him to recover.’
‘You did?’ Casey seemed a little shocked. ‘How do you know you can trust him?’
I trust him, she thought, but did not know why. ‘I just know I can,’ was her deliberately evasive answer.
‘Mmm, don’t always trust your womanly intuition. What’s his job, by the way?’
‘I haven’t discovered that much about him.’
‘We—ell, I guess he could be unemployed. What’s his name? Surely you know that.’
‘It’s Brett—Brett Carmichael.’
There was a sharp intake of breath, then, ‘Hey, I’ve a hunch I’ve heard that name. Now…’ He seemed to be finger-drumming, and she guessed he was at his office desk. ‘This is going to be a tough one. First I’ll ask around, then I’ll look through back issues of newspapers—see if I can get a lead. Got to go, Lauren. I’ll call you if I get any info on that name. Right?’ He disconnected the call.
The sky was a clear blue, drawing Lauren into the garden with her sketchpad. She wandered round the flowerbeds, deciding which blooms to draw. A brilliantly red fuchsia caught her eye, and she squatted on her folding stool and assembled her crayons alongside the pad on the large drawing board she used for support.
Some time later a dragging sound caught her attention, and she turned to investigate. Brett was bumping a reclining garden chair and its extension across the lawn.
‘Please carry on,’ he said, unfolding it and arranging the sprung cushions, then attaching the footrest. ‘I helped myself—’ he indicated the chair ‘—hope you don’t mind. I didn’t want to disturb you.’
‘Feel free,’ Lauren commented airily. ‘Maybe the fresh air will help you throw off your trouble. Better than lying in a stuffy room.’
‘That’s what I figured.’
He draped his length over the chair, arms folded, his legs stretching over the footrest. Lauren returned to her work, but the presence of the man seemed to have taken away her ability to concentrate. Nevertheless, she returned to her sketching, but, to her annoyance, the picture started to go wrong.
Something in her subconscious mind was troubling her, and it had something to do with the man beside her.
‘That chair—where did you find it?’
‘In the shed.’
The shed? She hadn’t even noticed yet that there was a garden shed. And surely it was locked? Marie’s uncle Redmund seemed to have a fixation about locking everything that could be opened.
‘Where did you find the key?’ she queried.
A shoulder lifted. ‘In the kitchen, tucked away between the dresser and that ancient stove.’
‘Truly? You went searching?’ She smiled, but wondered if she should be worried instead. ‘You must be good at tracking things down. Maybe you’ve got a sort of magnet in your head, and the metal key gave out a magnetic field?’
He gave a brief laugh, which made Lauren surmise that he was on the way to recovery. A small, irritating voice whispered, You don’t want him to get better too soon, do you? She told it to be quiet.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ he answered. There was a pause, then he said, ‘Much of my life is spent in getting to the core of things.’
What do you do for a living? The thought formed in her mind but didn’t make it to her lips. He was plainly a ‘here today and gone tomorrow’ kind of man, a wanderer. He had as good as told her that last night, and as a result he picked up things like fevers. So what he did for a living was none of her business, was it?
Strange, she pondered, remembering her conversation with Uncle Redmund that morning—he had been the second person she’d heard describe himself as a wanderer. But thousands of people wandered the world these days—young women, unattached men, as this man seemed to be.
‘You make your living as an artist?’ he queried, watching the movements of her hand but, low down as he was, unable to see what they were reproducing.
She nodded. ‘Waiting for the next commission, wherever it might come from. Getting this job looking after Mr Gard’s house was a great help in plugging the hole I would have made otherwise in my bank balance.’ There was another pause, then, as her heartbeats revved to overdrive, she added as casually as she could, ‘Did I give you a definite answer to your question about whether you can stay here? Anyway, the answer’s yes.’
She glanced at him. Would he turn her down flat?
‘Indefinitely?’ An eyebrow lifted.
‘If you like.’
‘Thanks.’
It wasn’t until she heard his answer, delivered in an equally casual tone, that her heart returned to its normal beat. Then a small, annoyingly sane voice asked, Have you done the right thing? How long will he stay? Can you honestly trust him? For heaven’s sake, who is he?
For a while he seemed to be sleeping. As she worked Lauren tuned in to the sounds around her—the birdsong, a humming bee, a dog’s distant bark, leaves moving in the breeze.
He stirred and stretched his long body, and Lauren’s awareness of him immediately came to life. Why should her senses start reeling at the nearness of the man? OK, he was good-looking and clearly of high intelligence, with a magnetism about him that any woman would find difficult to resist.
So what? she tried telling herself. He was just another human being, wasn’t he? No, he wasn’t. She had to acknowledge that no other man had ever affected her in the way this stranger did.
She looked at him, and her pulses raced at the discovery that he had been watching her. He switched his attention to their surroundings.
