Baby on Loan

Hungry, but anxious not to disturb the sleeping baby, she found half a packet of chocolate biscuits left by Carenza, settled carefully into a large and very comfortable armchair and tucked in to them.

She must have fallen asleep mid-bite because when Mao, miaowing and clattering his claws against the window, woke her, there were crumbs adhering to the chocolate liberally smeared down the front of her shirt; the remains of the biscuit had succumbed to gravity and were lying, chocolate-side-down on the carpet.

She let in the cat, bathed and fed Bertie and finally put him into his cot. Then she flung her crumby, chocolate-stained shirt into the laundry basket along with everything else she was wearing, pulled on a T-shirt because it was the first thing that came to hand, brushed her teeth and fell into bed.

In that brief moment before sleep claimed her, she had a momentary vision of the chocolate biscuit lying on the Persian rug in the drawing room and knew she should get up and do something about it.

And turn on the burglar alarm.

Then nothing.

Patrick dropped his bag in the hall and crossed to the alarm to punch in the code number. It wasn’t switched on. Carenza had obviously forgotten to set it. He really should have known better than to give in to his sister’s pleading and let her stay here.

Tomorrow he’d write her a cheque, she’d disappear like snow in August and everything would be back to normal.

Well, very nearly normal. It might be the middle of the night in London, but he’d slept on the plane and it would probably take days for his body clock to readjust. Right now, he was wide awake and hungry.

He just hoped there was something edible in the fridge. He snapped on the kitchen light, swallowed hard and determinedly ignored the sinkful of un-washed dishes.

It was harder to ignore a faint, disturbingly familiar scent that he couldn’t quite place. Probably because it was overlain with the smell of steamed fish.

The gritty crunch of biscuit crumbs beneath his feet distracted him, doing nothing to improve his temper. Forget a cheque. Carenza would be grateful to escape when he’d finished with her. House-sitting indeed. She couldn’t be relied upon to sit in a cardboard box.

Jessie’s first thought, as she woke up with a guilty start, was panic. It was too quiet. She leapt out of bed, peered anxiously into the cot, then groped for her spectacles and put them on for a closer look. Just to be on the safe side. A week of this and she’d be a nervous wreck.

But there was nothing the matter with Bertie. In the faint spillage of light from the landing, she could see that he was fast asleep. She touched his cheek; it was warm, but not too warm. He was just fine. Gorgeous in fact, with a peachy bloom to his cheek and his dark hair curling softly around his ears.

The cat was fine, too.

She froze, horror struck. Faye would have a hissy fit if she could see her precious infant sharing his sleeping quarters with Mao, who had curled up and made himself thoroughly at home at the bottom of the cot.

She picked him up. He protested. Bertie stirred. She forced herself to cuddle the cat, murmur sweet nothings as she stroked him, even as her skin goosed at the touch of his fur.

Mao looked at her through suspicious, narrowed eyes as if he knew exactly what she was thinking as she tiptoed towards the door.

She had just made it to the landing when she realised what had woken her. There was someone in the kitchen.

CHAPTER TWO

JESSIE had any number of choices. Call the police. Scream. Barricade herself in with Bertie and Mao and wait until the burglar had helped himself to whatever he fancied and went away. Scream. Confront the villain. Scream…

Oh, stop it! she told her wittering brain. The police. She had a mobile; she’d call the police. She pushed her spectacles down her nose and looked around. Where was it? When had she last used it? Oh, hell, it was in her handbag and that was downstairs. With the burglar. Which dealt with option number one.

And she’d thought her life couldn’t get any worse.

Screaming, seriously screaming, and giving vent to all the anguish of the last two days had its attractions.

But screaming would wake Bertie and frighten Mao and maybe the burglar wouldn’t run away. Maybe he’d come looking for her in order to shut her up. Which thought was sufficient to put a hold on screaming. For the moment.

It would have to be option number three, then. The barricade.

She put the cat down and looked around. Memory and the light spilling in from the landing suggested that the furniture was of the kind that required a minimum of three heavily muscled men to shift. With a fourth directing operations. Except for Bertie’s lightweight travelling cot, of course. Apart from the fact that it wouldn’t stop a determined flea, Bertie was in it. Asleep. And no one was going to wake up Bertie if she could help it.

But any burglar worth his salt would certainly come upstairs looking for jewellery and money.

It was time for option four. No! Not screaming! And maybe not confronting the villain; she preferred to remain defensive if at all possible. What she needed, then, was something with which to defend herself. And Bertie. And, since he was her responsibility too, Mao.

She swallowed. And if there was more than one of them?

Refusing to think about it, she opened the wardrobe door and peered into the dark interior, desperate for inspiration. She’d been too busy to unpack and now she discovered it was full of dark, heavy clothes. Really, Carrie might have emptied the wardrobe of her gothic junk before she let the place…

She didn’t have time to worry about it. What she needed right now was a sharply pointed umbrella, or… Something hard and heavy fell out and landed painfully on her toes. She bit back a yell of pain and bent to pick up the object.

It was a cricket bat. Brilliant. Odd—she didn’t quite see Carenza leading out the England ladies’ cricket team—but brilliant. She seized it and immediately felt more in control. Hefting it defensively in her hand, she crossed to the door, opened it a little wider in order to listen.

Before she could stop him, Mao shot through the gap.

Patrick opened the fridge. On the shelf inside the door, there was an open carton of milk; he sniffed it cautiously. It was fresh. He replaced it and explored further.

He took out a dish, uncovered it. It appeared to be mashed up fish. Unimpressed by Carenza’s culinary skills, he rejected it, but as he opened a box of eggs something soft and warm brushed against his ankles.

Unnerved, he stepped back. The creature let out a banshee wail as he stepped on its tail, before tangling itself between his legs as it tried to escape.

Off balance and uncertain where he could safely put his feet, Patrick made a grab for the first thing that came to hand.

It was the shelf inside the fridge door.

It took his weight for a tantalising millisecond during which he thought he’d got away with it. Then, as shelf and door parted company, milk and moulded plastic succumbed to gravity and hit the floor. Patrick and the eggs were delayed slightly, while his head bounced off the edge of the work surface.

Jessie, dithering behind the bedroom door and wondering whether in fact the bat was such a good idea after all—she might just be handing the burglar a weapon—heard Mao’s howl of outrage, swiftly followed by a horrendous crash.

Had the burglar killed the cat? Had the cat killed the burglar? Whatever was going on, it was clear that she could no longer hide upstairs. With the cricket bat raised shakily before her, she advanced slowly down the stairs and approached the kitchen with caution.

She’d been too tired to bother with clearing up before she’d fallen into bed, but, even so, the scene that met her gaze was a shock. Smashed eggs, milk spreading to form a small lake, a lake at which a perfectly content Mao was busy lapping, and in the middle of it all, flat on his back, blood oozing from a wound on his forehead, lay a man who seemed to fill all the available space. A man dressed from head to toe in burglar-black. Black chinos, a black shirt, sleeves rolled back to reveal thickly muscled forearms.

He was tall and strong and he would have disarmed her without raising a sweat.

Fortunately, he was unconscious.

Or maybe not. Even as she stood there, congratulating herself on the fact, he groaned and opened his eyes. Jessie grasped the bat tightly, swallowed nervously and croaked, ‘Don’t move!’

Patrick stared up at the ceiling. The kitchen ceiling. He was lying on the kitchen floor, in a very cold puddle, and his head felt as if it was about to fall off. And there was a wild-haired, semi-naked woman wearing spectacles two sizes too big for her, threatening him with his own cricket bat. Had she hit him with it? He began to raise his hand to his head in order to assess the damage.

‘Don’t move!’ she repeated.

The words, undoubtedly meant to be threatening—although the effect was considerably diminished by the nervous wobble in her voice—were unnecessary. He had no desire to move. He just wanted to close his eyes and hope that when he opened them again all this would have gone away.

He tried it.