His Little Girl

Dora snapped. Ignoring the fact that he was the better part of a head taller than her, and could have picked her up as easily as she had lifted the infant in her arms, ignoring the fact that he looked as if he had been sleeping beneath a hedge for a week, she came right back at him.

‘Who the devil wants to know?’

The man stiffened at this attack. ‘I do.’ Then, quite unexpectedly, he dropped the arm shading his face and smiled. Dora’s sister was a model, Dora had seen professionals smile. This man was good. And he moved towards her, totally at ease with the situation. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout, but you startled me—’

‘I startled you?’ Dora gaped at him, momentarily stunned by his nerve. Then she gathered herself. ‘How did you get in here?’ she demanded.

‘I picked the lock,’ he said, with disarming candour. He was regarding her with open curiosity, not in the least embarrassed by such a confession. ‘I thought the cottage was empty.’

Picked the lock? He admitted it, and smiled as he said it, without an ounce of shame or remorse. Challenged like this, any ordinary burglar would have done the decent thing and taken to his heels. She hefted the child in her arms, fitting her more comfortably to her hip. But then ordinary burglars didn’t take sick children with them when they went about their nightly forays.

‘Well, as you can see, it’s not empty. I live here, mister,’ she declared, ignoring her own temporary status during her sister’s absence as a mere detail. When Poppy had offered her the use of the cottage while she and Richard were away she had been instructed to treat the place as if it were her own, but with privileges came responsibility. Right now, Dora decided it was time to take her responsibilities seriously. So she glared at the intruder, refusing to be charmed by an overgrown tramp with a practised smile, who was obviously looking for somewhere dry to bed down for the night ‘I live here,’ she repeated, ‘and I don’t take in lodgers, paying or otherwise, so you’d better get moving.’

The smile abruptly vanished. ‘I’ll move when I’m good and ready—’ he began.

‘Tell that to the police; they’ll be here any minute—’ As her voice rose the child in her arms began to wail, a thin, painful little cry that distracted Dora so that she turned to the child, hushing her gently as she stroked her hair. ‘What on earth are you doing out with a sick child at this time of night anyway?’ she demanded, as the little girl quietened under her touch. ‘She should be in bed.’

‘That’s exactly where I was planning to put her, just as soon as I’d warmed her some milk,’ he said tightly, confirming her suspicions. He made a slight gesture at a carton of milk on the table, as if it provided him with some sort of alibi. ‘I didn’t expect to find anyone here.’

‘So you said.’ Dora ignored the fact that his voice belied his torn, muddy jeans, a grubby sweater and a soft leather bomber jacket that had once cost a fortune but had seen some very hard wear since, and was now coming unstitched at the seams. A tramp with a public school accent was still a tramp. ‘I suppose you were planning to squat?’

‘Of course not.’ A fleeting glance of irritation crossed the man’s face and he shrugged. ‘Richard won’t mind me staying for a few days.’

‘Richard!’ Her eyebrows rose as he made free with her brother-in-law’s name.

‘Richard Marriott,’ he elaborated. ‘The owner of this cottage.’

‘I know who Richard Marriott is. And you’ll pardon me if I differ with you regarding his reaction. I happen to know that he takes a very dim view of breaking and entering.’

This declaration seemed to amuse her intruder. ‘Unless he’s the one doing it. I should know—he’s the one who taught me enough to get in here.’ He looked her in the eye and defied her to tell him otherwise.

‘Richard uses his skills to test security systems,’ she protested. ‘Not for house-breaking.’

‘That’s true,’ he conceded.

Gannon regarded the young woman who was defying him with concern. She was either crazy, or a whole lot tougher than she looked, standing there in nothing but a satin nightdress which clung to her in a manner that would give a monk ideas. The wrap that might have given her some measure of decency had been untied and thrown about Sophie, to warm her. Well, even the toughest women have their weaknesses, he thought, weaknesses that just this once he would be forced to turn to his own advantage.

He took a step forward. She didn’t retreat, but stood her ground and stared him down. ‘I’ll take Sophie,’ he said, and saw the flash of concern that lit something deep in dark grey eyes that a moment before had been simply hostile. He struggled with guilt at what he was about to do. But Sophie was at the end of her tether, and he would do whatever it took to make his daughter safe.

‘Take her?’

‘You asked us to leave.’ He reached for the child. Sophie grumbled sleepily as he disturbed her, and the woman stepped back, holding the child protectively to her chest.

‘Where? Where will you go?’ she demanded.

He shrugged. ‘Maybe I’ll find a barn. Come on, sweetheart, we’ve disturbed this lady long enough.’

‘No—’ He managed to look puzzled. ‘You can’t take her back out there. She’s got a temperature.’

Bingo. ‘Has she?’ He put his hand on Sophie’s head and gave a resigned shrug. ‘Maybe you’re right. It’s been a tough few days.’ He put his hands lightly beneath the child’s arms, as if planning to take her. ‘But don’t worry. We’ll manage...somehow.’

She was torn. He saw the momentary struggle darken her eyes. She wanted him to go, but her conscience wouldn’t allow her to send Sophie out into the night. ‘You might. She won’t,’ she said, as her conscience won. ‘I thought you were going to warm her some milk?’

He glanced at the carton of milk standing on the cupboard, alongside a Sussex trug overflowing with an artfully casual arrangement of dried flowers. Beside it a couple of shabby waxed jackets hung from a Shaker peg rail. Very classy. The last time he had been at the cottage this had been little more than a scullery. Now it was an entrance lobby straight out of Homes and Gardens, quarry-tiled and expensively rustic.

He turned back to the young woman who, if he was clever enough, would any minute be urging him to stay. For the sake of the child. It was time to remind her that Richard was his friend. He replaced the torch on the hook behind the door, where he had found it—that at least had not changed since their fishing trips—and picked up the milk.

‘Yes, I was.’ He indicated the open cupboard in which rubber boots and outdoor shoes were stored instead of the pans he had been expecting. ‘In fact I was looking for a saucepan when I disturbed you. What happened to the kitchen? And when did Richard have electricity installed?’

‘That’s really none of your business,’ Dora replied curtly. But it did explain why he had been poking about the cupboards in the dark. It simply hadn’t occurred to him to look for a light switch. He might have been to the cottage before, but not in the last twelve months.

Not that she had been impressed with his claim that he knew Richard. Anybody around here would have known that this cottage belonged to Richard Marriott. And if he did know him, so what? He’d still broken in. ‘I didn’t catch your name,’ she said.

‘Gannon. John Gannon,’ he said, extending his hand formally, as if this was some cocktail party rather than a middle-of-the-night confrontation that should have him cringing with embarrassment.

She could see that he just wasn’t the cringing type. On the contrary, his gaze was wandering appreciatively from her tousled hair, over the loose silk wrap, lingering on pink-painted toenails peeping out from beneath the hem of her nightgown, before returning to her face. Then his face creased in a thoughtful frown. ‘Have we met somewhere before?’

There had been a lot of publicity when she’d returned from the Balkans; total strangers accosting her in the street, wanting to talk to her, newspapers wanting to write about the ‘Sloane’ who had given up the social whirl to drive aid trucks across Europe. If he remembered that he would be sure that he had fallen on his feet, sure that she was a soft touch.

It had been the need to get away from all that which had driven Dora down to the cottage in the first place, so, what with one thing and another, it seemed wiser not to jog his memory about where he might have seen her face before. And she ignored his hand, along with his invitation to introduce herself.

She wasn’t about to exchange civilities with a common criminal, particularly not one who had broken into her sister’s home. Even if he did have a velvet-soft voice, toffee-brown eyes and a deliciously cleft chin. After all the chin hadn’t been shaved in several days. And the toffee eyes were taking rather too much liberty with her under-dressed figure for her liking. With the child in her arms, she was unable to do anything about the wrap, but conscious that his gaze had become riveted to her pink toenails, she shuffled them out of sight.

‘That’s hardly an original pick-up line,’ she replied, with a crispness she was far from feeling.

‘No,’ he agreed, barely able to conceal his amusement, despite his exhaustion. This was one spirited lady. ‘I really must try harder.’

‘Don’t bother.’

‘Breaking and entering isn’t my usual line of business,’ he said, letting his hand fall to his side. He was still regarding her thoughtfully. ‘Who are you?’

Dora firmly resisted the temptation to ask him what his ‘usual line’ was. ‘Does it matter who I am?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose it does. But allow me to say that you’re a considerable improvement on Elizabeth. She would never have wasted time on anything quite so frivolous as painting her toenails.’

The man was outrageous. Not content with breaking into the cottage, he was flirting with her. Yet, despite her better judgement she was beginning to accept his familiarity with her brother-in-law’s personal life.

‘Elizabeth?’ she probed.

‘Elizabeth Marriott. Richard’s wife,’ he obliged. ‘A girl of very little imagination—a lack which was more than made up for by her greed, if the fact that she left him for a banker is anything to judge her by.’

‘A banker?’ He knew that he was being tested, Dora realised, but that didn’t stop her.

‘The kind that owns the bank,’ he obliged. ‘Not the kind who works behind the counter.’ And, having apparently awarded himself a pass grade, he made a broad gesture with the milk. ‘I never thought he’d sell this place, though.’

‘What makes you think he has?’

He looked about him. ‘This kind of thing isn’t his style.’