Here's the first page of OLD DESIRES -
‘MISS Carpenter?’
The enquiry was simply a
formality. Holly had no doubt that the man on her doorstep, filling the
entrance with his powerful presence, knew exactly who she was. In that, he had
her at a disadvantage and she didn’t much care for it, or for the quite
unmistakeable chill in his manner.
She had the feeling that,
whatever the reason for his call, he would prefer not to be making it and she
already wished she had kept to her usual habit of ignoring the doorbell when
she was working. Except that this afternoon nothing was going right and she had
almost welcomed the interruption.
Besides, one look had been enough
to warn her that this man would not have simply given up and gone away.
Determination was written in every austere, finely chiselled line of his face;
an intensity of purpose that hardened the sensual curve of his full lower lip.
‘I’m Holly Carpenter,’ she
affirmed with an unconscious lift of her chin, wondering what this arrogant and
very expensively-groomed man could possibly want with her. The well-cut navy
pin-striped suit gracing his square shoulders and lean, hard figure, and the
telling pale blue stripe of his tie, betrayed that he was a long way from his
City office. His method of transport, if the gleaming silver Rolls at the kerb
could be described in so plebeian a manner, was already attracting
curtain-twitching attention from a window opposite.
‘I DON’T believe it! Where on
earth did he spring from?’ Tara
Lambert moved quickly to the door
but the tail lights of her partner’s car were already disappearing into the
blackness of the evening, taking with them any possibility of help from that
direction.
She
glanced back to where the man was waiting across the street. He too was staring
after Beth’s car, obviously wondering
if Tara
had gone home with her partner. Well it was too late to regret refusing the
proffered lift, but if she moved quickly it might not be too late to escape.
Shrugging
her raincoat collar up high around her ears she snapped open her umbrella,
stepped out into the wet evening and took off swiftly down the street.
She
had gone only a couple of hundred yards when she heard her name being called
from the other side of the street. Her escape bid had not, after all, gone
unnoticed. With a sinking heart she glanced around her; the shops were already
closed and there was nowhere to seek refuge in the shuttered street. Even the
taxi rank was deserted, although no cabbie would have thanked her for wasting
his time on the short ride to her flat.
She
hurried on, urging the traffic lights to stay green and keep the traffic
moving, but even as the thought entered her head they flicked to amber.
She
stopped, cursing herself for every kind of an idiot. She could have stayed in
the office and phoned for a taxi. Maybe it was
not too late to beat a strategic retreat.
‘Tara!’ Her name,
much closer, startled her and she glanced back before she could stop herself. He
was weaving through the slowing cars and cutting off all possibility of escape
in that direction.
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