His Mistress For A Week

‘Now.’ Clem straightened the pens on her desk, each one exactly a centimetre apart. ‘It’s...kind of an emergency.’

His bushy brows came together in a concerned frown. ‘Not your mother again?’

‘Yes and no.’ Clem mentally crossed her fingers at her little white lie. ‘It’s hard to explain.’

He patted her on the shoulder like he was patting a pet of which he had grown terribly fond. ‘You’re a good girl, Clem. Always doing the right thing by your mother when as far as I can see she’s never done the right thing by you.’

Clem hadn’t told Dougal much about her background but her mother had come into the shop a number of times. Needless to say, he’d figured everything else out for himself. He was an excellent judge of character and each time her mother left he would look at Clem with an empathetic grimace and hand her the packet of chocolate digestives without saying a single word.

‘I’ll only be a week at the most,’ Clem said, slinging her bag over her shoulder and snatching up her coat off the back of her chair. ‘If there’s any change, I’ll let you know.’

‘Take all the time you need,’ Dougal said. ‘You deserve a holiday.’

Some holiday this was going to be.

* * *

It took Clem way too long to pack. That was another reason she rarely went away. She could never decide what to take and ended up taking too much. It came from years of having to pack at short notice when her mother would get sick of her latest lover and announce they were leaving. Now. Clem had flown in a heart-flapping panic every single time. She’d always packed Jamie’s things first because that was what big sisters did, especially when you had a mother who couldn’t spell, let alone understand, the concept of organisation. But it had often meant she hadn’t got to pack her own things in time for their mother’s theatrical flounce out the door.

But these days Clem was too organised. She didn’t have a crooked knife or fork in her drawer. The cups and mugs were all perfectly aligned, the handles turned to the right. The plates and bowls were in neat stacks in neat rows. The glasses were lined up like soldiers ready for an inspection parade. The clothes in her wardrobe were positioned according to colour—not that she had a lot of it in her wardrobe. That was the problem with having been fat as a teenager; she had got used to wearing dark clothing to disguise her shape and had never really thrown the habit.

Deciding what clothes to take and what to leave behind was a problem. What if it was hot? What if it rained? The French Riviera had a much warmer climate than London in July but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t throw up some inclement weather now and again.

Then there was the issue of shoes. She had different pairs for each day of the week. Some people didn’t step on cracks in the footpath. Clem didn’t wear the same pair of shoes two days running.

Then there was her favourite mug, Jamie’s first ever present to her when he was eight years old. She had her first cup of tea in it every morning. Without fail. It was part of the structure of her day. She needed it to feel secure. If she didn’t have tea in her special mug, then who knew what might happen?

It wasn’t worth the risk.

There was still no word from Jamie in spite of Clem leaving further messages, including one she left on his voicemail that bordered on her begging pitifully. Not something she was prone to do under normal circumstances, but nothing about this situation was even remotely normal. Ever since Alistair had told her he had information the teenagers were in the French Riviera, her mind kept going back to a memory of a brief holiday she and Jamie had been on when they were young.

One of their mother’s boyfriends had come from a village half an hour out from Nice. His parents had owned a holiday cottage in the hills and Clem remembered being insanely jealous that someone had not one home but two when she hadn’t known whose home she would be sleeping in from one day to the next. Even more enviable to her twelve-year-old mind had been the fact her mother’s boyfriend’s parents only used the cottage a couple of times a year. Two times a year! A caretaker living up the road checked on things in between times.

The muggy July air was like a hot breath against her face when Clem walked to where her car was parked further down her street. Her tiny flat didn’t have its own parking space but one of her elderly neighbours who no longer drove had offered Clem her space. Clem did Mavis’s shopping for her and took her to doctor’s appointments in exchange for the space. It was worth it...sort of. Eighty-four-year-old Mavis could talk. Really talk. If there were any iron pots with legs still on them in this neighbourhood, then Clem would like to see them. Clem was little more than human punctuation whenever Mavis got going. All that was required from her was: ‘Oh?’ ‘Mmm...’ ‘Aha.’ ‘I know.’ ‘Really?’ interjected at select intervals.

Clem kept her back to Mavis’s house as she stuffed her bulging suitcase on the back seat of her car, as the boot was too small. But it was like trying to push a hippo through a letterbox. She shoved and shoved. Swore under her breath. Shoved some more. Swore out loud.

The sound of Mavis’s front door opening made Clem’s heart sink. Shoot me now.

‘Off on holiday are you, dear?’ Mavis called out.

Clem turned and clenched her teeth behind her tight smile. ‘Just a short break. I was going to call in and tell you but I’m in a tearing hurry and—’

‘Where are you off to? Somewhere exciting?’

‘Erm... I’m kind of winging it.’

‘Are you going on your own?’

That’s the plan. ‘Yes.’

Mavis gave a beaming smile. ‘I bet you meet someone. I feel it in my bones. A summer holiday romance would be marvellous for you. I had one of those—did I tell you about it? It was on a cruise to the Mediterranean. I was—’

‘I’ll send you a postcard, shall I?’ Clem said, giving her bag a shove with her bottom. Might as well put it to some use since it did her no other favours.

‘Mind you, you have to be careful these days,’ Mavis said. ‘You don’t want your identity stolen. A friend of mine had that happen to her. Did I tell you about it?’

I wish someone would steal my neighbour. Clem kept her rictus smile in place. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be super-careful.’

‘Oh, look,’ Mavis said. ‘Here comes a nice man to help you with your bag.’

What nice man? There weren’t any nice men living in this street. None that she had met, anyway. It was full of little old ladies and cats. Clem looked to her right to see Alistair Hawthorne walking towards her as casually as you pleased. Her heart began to hammer. This could not be happening.

‘Going somewhere?’

Clem knew even her bottom had no hope of hiding her bag. ‘Just...erm...taking my washing to the laundromat.’

‘That looks like a lot of dirty linen to have out in public.’

You have no idea. ‘Why are you here?’ Clem said. ‘I thought the arrangement was for you to pick me up at the shop tomorrow.’

A knowing light shone in his eyes. ‘I thought we should get an early start.’

Her stomach dropped like a mallet on a block of wood. Clunk. She’d hoped to get off by herself. To conduct her own search without the disturbing company of a man she would do anything to avoid. ‘But I told you I wasn’t going with you.’

‘Which is why I’m here now to make sure you do.’

Clem threw him a gimlet glare. ‘You can’t kidnap me. It’s against the law.’

Something in his expression made the floor of her belly shiver like sand being trickled. ‘So is car and money theft.’

She swallowed a double knot of panic. Think. Think. Think. ‘How do you know you’re searching in the right place? You could travel all that way for nothing.’

‘My stepsister sent a text to a friend from a casino in Monte Carlo a couple of hours ago.’

Clem frowned. ‘Geez. How much money did she have on her? Monte Carlo isn’t exactly a backpacker’s destination.’

‘It’s not her money she’s spending.’

‘Your problem, not mine.’

His eyes never wavered from hers. ‘Our problem.’

Don’t remind me. Clem turned back to her bag, which was half in and half out of her car. She blew away the wisps of hair that had fallen around her face and gave the bag another hard shove.

‘Here. Let me.’

His body came up behind her, one of his hands reaching past her to take the handle of her bag. It was the most intimate contact she’d had with a man since...well, for a long time.