Tall, Dark And Dangerous

‘Michael Grant,’ he replied, a faint hint of amusement in the vivid blue of the eyes taking open stock of her obvious consternation. ‘And I can only assume you’re one of Libby’s many and varied friends,’ he added. For an instant, Ginny thought he was about to hold out a hand for her to shake; it rose, instead, to clutch theatrically at his head. ‘Sorry—I forgot—you’re the gardener.’

‘I’m also a friend of Libby’s,’ stated Ginny, acutely aware of the distaste behind his reference to Libby’s ‘many and varied friends’. He could hardly be expected to know that she held similar feelings towards that group of ruthless spongers who had once peopled Libby’s life, but who were now, mercifully, no longer part of it.

‘OK, so you’re a friend of Libby’s,’ he stated without interest, picking up his luggage and striding towards the creeper-clad villa. ’I’ve driven straight through from Paris, so you’ll forgive me if my only interest is in getting into a bath-tub and sluicing off the grime from the journey rather than socialising with you right now.’

Had she just driven five hundred miles or so, mused Ginny as she followed him into the house, she would have resembled a limp rag; yet there was barely a crease in the pale, immaculately tailored lightweight trousers of the man striding nonchalantly ahead of her, nor even in the dark silk shirt skimming with no trace of dampness the broad contours of his back.

She halted momentarily in her tracks, her exasperated intake of breath audible as she realised that it was the appalling problem of Michael Grant’s presence she should be dwelling on rather than his undeniable sartorial elegance.

‘Did you say something?’ he demanded, a look of irritation on his handsome features as he turned his head to her.

‘No,’ muttured Ginny, feeling hopelessly out of her depth. ‘But I was about to make tea—would you like some…or coffee, perhaps?’

‘Now, that’s original—the gardener offering me tea in my own place,’ he murmured, the scowl darkening. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a live-in gardener?’

‘But I am,’ protested Ginny, colour rushing mortifyingly to her cheeks. ‘I mean…I do…live here, that is. I do the housekeeping as well as the gardening.’

‘You don’t say,’ he drawled, his eyes narrowing in undisguised scrutiny. ‘And my niece—is she around?’

His niece, thought Ginny weakly, her mind scrabbling in vain to dredge up what it could on Libby’s tyrannical family. He could only be around thirty—surely too young to be an uncle?

‘She’s in Paris…she went to see some friends.’

‘I’m surprised she didn’t move them all down here with her,’ he stated, sarcasm oozing from his every word. ‘Or are you about to tell me she’s filled the place and is off visiting with the overspill?’

‘Only the two of us are staying here,’ replied Ginny, stung by the undisguised hostility of his tone, but feeling a reluctant understanding in the light of Libby’s chequered past. ‘And, to put your mind at rest, Libby no longer mixes with the sort of people she once did.’

‘So, you think my mind needs putting at rest, do you?’ He hesitated, frowning. ‘I don’t know your name.’

‘It’s Ginny—Ginny Price.’

‘And you’re telling me you’re not one of the usual free-loaders Libby has around her, is that it, Ginny?’

‘I most certainly am not a free-loader!’ she exclaimed with fiery indignation—now he was being downright rude.

‘Glad to hear it,’ he drawled, turning and continuing on into the house. ‘I’ll have the bedroom overlooking the cypress grove—if no one else is using it, that is.’

‘No one’s using it,’ snapped Ginny. ‘I’ll see to bedlinen for you. If you’d let us know you were coming, I could have had everything ready for you.’ As would any housekeeper-cum-gardener being paid the relative fortune she allegedly was, added Ginny silently to herself, her blood running cold at the mere thought.

‘I’m the kind of guy who prefers doing things on the spur of the moment,’ he retorted as be began climbing the wide, curving staircase. ‘Give me half an hour or so to get myself cleaned up,’ he added as he disappeared from view, ‘then I’ll gladly join you for tea.’

Ginny flew to the large, old-fashioned kitchen and flung herself down on one of the chairs at the huge, scrubbed wood table dominating it.

She had to get a grip on herself, think things through!

‘Libby, what have you got me into?’ she groaned softly, folding her arms against the table and lowering her head defeatedly on to them.

To most observers, the friendship that had sprung up between the rebellious American girl with a background of untold wealth, and the unnaturally subdued English girl without a penny to her name must have seemed one of the most unlikely imaginable.

‘The reason we’re over here is that my new stepmother is English—so my dad’s doing research at Trinity,’ the twelve-year-old Libby Collier had announced by way of introduction, on their first day at the small Cambridge secondary school at which Ginny would remain for the next four years and Libby for less than one.

‘Will you still be my friend when I’ve gone?’ Libby had later demanded, when their unlikely friendship had blossomed to a peculiarly mutual dependency.

‘Why would you go?’ Ginny had asked, devastated by even the thought of losing the one friend she had found in the barren new existence fate had imposed on her.

‘I know I won’t be here long,’ Libby had stated with prophetic despondency. ‘Jane’s my third stepmother, but she won’t last any longer than the others. In the academic world, my dad’s considered some sort of genius, but he’s just a birdbrain when it comes to personal relationships. He keeps saying my mom’s the only woman he’s ever truly loved…Why did she have to die?’ she had railed disconsolately.

‘At least you have your father!’ Ginny had rounded on her friend with a savagery born of her own stillgaping wounds. ‘Less than two years ago both my parents were killed in a car crash. That’s why I had to come here…and live with an aunt who hates me!’

She gave a weary shake of her head as she lifted it from her arms. It wasn’t strictly true to say that her aunt Irene hated her, she told herself bitterly, but there was no denying that the love her parents had lavished on her until the day they had been so brutally snatched from her ten-year-old life had had to last her the rest of her childhood.

Love had always been a stranger in Irene Bond’s house. She had felt nothing but disapproval for the vivacious sister, fifteen years her junior, who had so often in her short life tried to wean her from the almost fanatically rigid set of her ways and from the gratuitous penny-pinching that coloured her every move. Irene had regarded the entry of that sister’s child into her ordered life as nothing more than a chore to be tackled with the minimum of disruption to her routine.

Ginny gave another shake of her head, this time in an effort to rid it of the cloying bitterness of those memories.

Chalk and cheese she and Libby might have been, she reminisced sadly, but the mutual desperation of need that had first drawn them together had forged a bond between them that the years apart had never weakened.

She nearly jumped out of her skin at the sudden sound of the telephone ringing, then leapt to her feet and raced to the wall extension.

‘Hi, Ginny! Bad news for the kitty, I’m afraid—I’m being kept in overnight at the clinic. Though it won’t cost any more here than it does in Cannes and I’d have had to stay——’

‘Libby, for heaven’s sake, what’s wrong?’

‘My darned blood-sugar’s up a bit again, but it’s nothing to worry about—it’s not even up as much as it was last time, but they’re insisting on running all those tests again, but only to be one hundred and ten per cent on the safe side.’

‘Poor you,’ sympathised Ginny, silently thanking her lucky stars Libby had followed her obstetrician to Paris—there was no guaranteeing how she might have responded to that sort of news from another specialist. ‘And don’t you dare worry about the kitty—it’s extremely healthy, thanks to the fact that the Lebauts have just paid me for the work I did on their garden…Libby, are you sure you’re OK?’

‘Ginny, I’m a pampered heiress,’ teased Libby, sounding on top of the world, ‘the sort who gets hospitalised for a month with an ingrown toe-nail—so stop fussing!’

‘I’m not,’ sighed Ginny. ‘I just had to make sure you were up to hearing the news…Your uncle’s just arrived.’

‘David?’ groaned Libby.

‘He says his name’s Michael,’ said Ginny, her eyes widening with alarm. She knew relatively little about Libby’s family, except that they were ghastly—and it hadn’t even occurred to her to ask for proof of the caller’s identity. ‘He seems terribly young to be your uncle,’ she added nervously.

‘If the guy you’re referring to looks as though he’s just stepped off the cover of a movie magazine, that’s my uncle Michael,’ replied Libby hollowly. ‘He’s only about eight or nine years older than I am—the baby of the Grant dynasty, but lethal all the same.’

‘He says he owns the villa.’

‘Now you mention it, he does,’ muttered Libby vaguely, her mind plainly on other things. ‘Darn it, this is the last thing we need…Did he say how long he’d be staying?’

‘No, but he obviously wasn’t in the least pleased to find me in residence,’ replied Ginny, then related what had happened.

‘I should have realised one of them would show up here sooner or later to check on me,’ stated Libby morosely. ‘I guess Michael must be in France on business, but don’t worry, he won’t waste too much time hanging around waiting for me to show up—hotshot tycoons like him measure their time in bucks,’ she added, equally morosely. ‘Where is he right now?’

‘Having a bath. Libby, what am I supposed to say to him?’

‘Anything, as long as it’s not the fact I’m pregnant—that’s the last thing I need them knowing!’