Hot Blood

As she turned away Liam tersely demanded, ‘Where were you all last night?’

She froze, staring up at him. ‘What?’

‘Don’t give me that innocent look! I know you weren’t home. I wanted to remind you to get here by half past eight. I kept ringing from six-thirty onwards but just got your answering machine. I left a couple of messages asking you to ring me back, but you never did.’

Fred and Paddy had discreetly deposited their loads on the empty stall and melted away back to the van to get some more of the items they had brought, hoping no doubt that by the time they got back here she and Liam would have stopped snarling at each other. Some hope!

Turning her back on him, Kit began to unpack some of the wrapped pieces in one of the boxes, setting them out carefully on the stall. She felt Liam glaring at her as she unwrapped a piece of art nouveau glass—a twisty candlestick in rainbow colours which had been allowed to run like melting wax.

Casually without looking at him, she said over her shoulder, ‘I went to the cinema club to see Garbo in Camille last night.’

‘Was it a midnight performance?’ he bit out.

‘Midnight performance?’ she repeated, baffled. ‘Of course not!’ She couldn’t actually remember what time she had got back to her flat, but it hadn’t been that late, surely?

She went on unwrapping porcelain, talking without looking at him. ‘I was back home by midnight! I didn’t check my answering machine; I forgot it was on so I didn’t think of switching it off, and this morning I was in such a rush, grabbing some coffee and toast, that I still didn’t remember to check to see if there were any messages. I went straight to bed as soon as I got home last night.’

‘Did you go alone?’ he asked, his tone as cutting as a knife going through silk.

Kit gave him an incredulous, angry stare. ‘To bed?’ She couldn’t believe he had asked her that. Hot colour rushed up her face—the scarlet of rage rather than embarrassment.

‘No, to the cinema!’ he bit out like someone snapping cotton between their teeth.

‘Yes to both, as it happens!’ she snapped back. What was he suggesting—that she had gone out with someone else last night? Was having an affair? He was reacting with possessive jealousy, yet he kept saying that he didn’t want to own her or have her own him. Why didn’t he make up his mind? He was the most contradictory, bewildering man she had ever known.

‘Really?’ His mouth twisted cynically, disbelievingly.

She hated the way he was looking at her. ‘Believe it or not, just as you like! It doesn’t bother me,’ she muttered. ‘Look, are you going to stand there and watch me working? Would it be too much to ask you to help?’

His face tight, he took a set of six French silver dessert spoons out of the box and put them down on the stall in a prominent place, his long fingers automatically caressing even in his temper. Liam loved beautiful things; he and Kit had that in common, which was why their partnership had worked so well until now.

He had inherited the auction rooms from his father, Gerald Keble. He had worked for the firm ever since he’d left university with an art degree two years after Kit had graduated. Kit had been engaged to Hugh by then and hadn’t quite made up her mind what she was going to do for a career. She had worked in her father’s shop until she’d got married and had her son, and even while she was running a home and taking care of Paul she had still managed to work part-time for her father during his lifetime.

It wasn’t until later that she’d begun working with Liam, but she had always known him through the auction rooms which she and her father had frequently visited to buy objects for their shop. His family—on both sides—had lived in Silverburn for centuries; their names, many covered in moss and fading, were carved on rows of graves in the old churchyard behind St Mary’s, the medieval church which stood on the top of the winding high street, as were those of Kit’s ancestors.

Neither of them came from rich or powerful stock. They were descended from shopkeepers and market traders, farm labourers and wagoners—the ordinary working people of this little English town over many generations.

‘I saw Mrs Walton, the vicar’s wife, just now,’ Liam murmured as he set out a Waterford crystal rose bowl on the stall. ‘She told me she saw you last night coming out of the cinema with what she described as a very attractive man, much younger than you!’

Kit swallowed, going a furious shade of fuchsia. She should have known that someone was bound to notice her with Joe. This was a small town-anyone who had lived here for years knew almost everyone else; nothing you did was ever missed and people were always curious, and always talked about anything they saw or heard. You couldn’t hope to keep a secret here.

That was, paradoxically, one of the things she loved about the place for all that it made her cross too; there was no chance of being forgotten or ignored here, of leading a lonely existence. You were part of the community whether you liked it or not and your entire life was an open book. That might have had a down side but it also made you feel good; you knew you belonged.

‘I may have come out with him—I didn’t go in there with him!’ she said irritably, and then her heart suddenly began to beat like an overwound clock.

Was Liam jealous? The idea made her mouth go dry. Jealousy would mean that he cared—really cared. Or would it? He could just resent her showing signs of interest in someone else, even though he made it clear that there was no future for her with him. Men could be very dog-in-themanger.

‘Oh, I see,’ he drawled sarcastically. ‘You picked him up inside, did you?

‘“Picked him up”?’ she repeated, very flushed. ‘I did nothing of the kind!’

He looked at her with a curling lip, contempt in his eyes, in his voice.

‘What on earth’s the matter with you? Don’t you realise that a woman of your age is taking a stupid risk talking to a strange man in a cinema—especially if it’s someone much younger than you? Mrs Walton said she was sure he wasn’t even forty yet!’

Indignantly Kit said, ‘Well, Mrs Walton’s as wrong about his age as she is about most things! You’d think a vicar’s wife would have more to do with her time than spread gossip. Joe’s forty-two, as it happens! Not that much younger than me!’ She had told Joe that she was much older than he was, but she didn’t enjoy knowing that other people had thought the same thing.

Liam faced her, his eyes narrowed and hostile. ‘Ten years younger, Kit! If it was the other way around, if you were ten years younger than him, it wouldn’t matter so much but—’

‘Why is it OK for a man to go out with a much younger woman but not the other way around?’ she seethed, remembering the beautiful redhead he had been talking to—apparently it was OK for him to ask her out although she was twenty years younger than he was. ‘If Joe doesn’t mind me being older, what business is it of yours?’

His hard grey eyes glittered. ‘You seem to know a lot about him. He wasn’t a stranger, then? You’d met him before? How long have you known him?’

‘What is this—the Spanish Inquisition?’

Liam coldly demanded, ‘Why don’t you want to talk about him? What have you got to hide?’

‘I just don’t like being grilled as if I were a murder suspect! As it happens, Joe lives in my apartment block.’ She wasn’t telling him the absolute truthnot because she was ashamed of it but because with Liam in his present mood she wasn’t going to admit that she had let Joe pick her up in the cinema. She still couldn’t believe it herself; even as a teenager she had never been one to strike up instant relationships.

But so what? It wasn’t a crime, and Joe had been nice; she had been in no danger from him. She had known that from the minute they had got into conversation.

‘He’s a neighbour of yours?’ Liam repeated, his frown etching heavy lines in his forehead. ‘Have I seen him?’

‘No, I don’t think so. He’s just moved here.’

‘Where from?’

‘Well…London, I suppose.’

‘You suppose? You mean you don’t know where he came from?’

‘He seems to have lived all over the world, but I think he was based in London.’

‘You think? Well, what does he do for a living?’

‘He retired recently—’

‘Been sacked, you mean!’ interrupted Liam roughly. ‘If he’s only forty he can hardly have retired! He’s lost his job—and he’s lying about it. I don’t like the sound of that.’

Kit was getting angrier. ‘Don’t make such snap judgements! You’ve never even set eyes on him. He used to be a photographer on an international magazine, covering wars and revolutions, but he got tired of the life and gave up his job. He wasn’t sacked or made redundant. He wanted to stop travelling, settle down somewhere; he’s writing his autobiography.’

Liam’s brows shot up. ‘He’s what? Writing his autobiography? He has to be kidding. You’re very naïve if you swallowed that! Only famous people write their autobiographies—is he famous?’ His voice was hard with sarcasm. ‘What did you say his name was?’

‘Joe Ingram.’

‘Joe Ingram?’ Liam’s face changed, his eyes surprised. After a moment he said roughly, ‘Well, I’ve heard of him. He got some sort of award last year for a photo of a dying soldier in an African street. It was a damned good picture—black and white. I saw it in an exhibition in London.’ There was a pause, then he reluctantly muttered, ‘I must say I was impressed.’ He looked as if he hated to admit it.

Kit wished that she had seen it; it must have been good if it had impressed Liam; it wasn’t easy to impress him. She wasn’t surprised to hear that Joe had been very successful in his job, though—not only because he had told her that he was writing his autobiography but because there had been something assured and confident about the man himself. Joe was easy in his own skin; he had done a great deal, seen a lot of the world and found out about himself too, she suspected; found out enough to know what he wanted from life.