The Most Scandalous Ravensdale

The party was going to be televised live. His reputation would be on the line. Everyone knew he had been assigned the task of getting Kat into the bosom of the family. He couldn’t accept failure. He had to pull this off no matter what. Failure wasn’t in his vocabulary. His professional tag line was ‘Flynn Equals Win.’

Kat was being pig-headed about meeting Richard out of loyalty to her mother. That wasn’t a bad thing. He understood it. Admired it, even. But this wasn’t just about her father. The whole family wanted to embrace her because they were decent people who wanted to do the right thing by her. She had no one else. He couldn’t see why she wouldn’t welcome the chance to be included in one of London’s wealthiest and most talented families. Plus they could fast-track her to the fame she was striving for.

Cricket lifted his head off his crossed paws and gave a sharp bark.

‘You want a walk at this time of night?’ Flynn said.

Cricket bounced up and yapped in excitement, spinning in circles like a dervish on an upper. Flynn put his papers down and smiled. ‘You do realise this is why my mother got rid of you? You’re seriously high maintenance.’

Cricket ran to pick up his lead, trailing it behind him and getting his stubby little legs tangled up in it in his excitement. Flynn bent down to clip the lead on the dog’s collar and ruffled his odd little one-up, one-down ears. ‘Come on, you crazy little mutt. But, if it starts snowing, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_0d478d4a-193e-5ccd-bce4-a3d63feaf094)

KAT WAS ON her way to bed when she realised she hadn’t seen Monty since she had given him dinner—or tried to. He had turned up his nose at her and stalked off with his tail twitching as though someone had sent an electric current through him. The Skype attempt hadn’t gone well either—she bore the scratches on her hands to prove it. But at least she had met the Carstairs family, who were as lovely as they appeared in their array of photographs. They assured her Monty would soon be purring contentedly in her lap once he established trust. They never once mentioned their handsome neighbour, which seemed a bit suspicious to Kat. If he was smack, bang in the middle of their most recent Christmas photo, then surely they would mention him in passing?

She couldn’t stop looking at that photo every time she went into the sitting room. It wasn’t just Flynn’s smiling face that pulled her gaze, but the way he was so comfortable around those kids. The little boy called Josh was looking up at Flynn in what looked like a state of hero worship. There was another photo in the study, with Flynn and the Carstairses’ little girl Bella, who was about three years old, sitting on Flynn’s knee. She was sucking her little thumb and leaning contentedly against Flynn’s broad chest as he read to her from a children’s picture book.

It made Kat wonder if he planned to settle down and have his own family one day. He was known to be a bit of a ladies’ man but not as much of a full-on playboy as Jake Ravensdale had been before becoming engaged to Jasmine Connolly. But if Flynn had been seeing anyone on a regular basis lately there hadn’t been anything in the press—or not that Kat had been able to find.

The only person he had been seen with, ironically enough, was her.

She looked through each of the rooms but Monty wasn’t anywhere to be seen. There was a circular patch of sooty fur where he had been sleeping on the Carstairses’ white linen bed but no sign of him in the flesh...or fur, so to speak.

She checked all the windows, even though she hadn’t opened any, to make sure he hadn’t escaped. But when she checked the laundry window she noticed there was a cat flap on the bottom of the door. She hadn’t noticed it there before, but then, why would she? Monty was supposed to be an inside cat. Kat had cleaned his litter tray earlier. He wasn’t supposed to go outside and get wet, or snowed on, or run over by a car...or bring in—gulp—horrible hunting trophies. The cat flap was unlocked. Should she close it? What if he was outside and couldn’t get back in?

Kat decided to do another thorough search of the house before she locked the cat flap. Surely Monty wouldn’t go outside on such a foul night? What was that saying about mad dogs and Englishmen? Or was that just a saying about summer?

She was coming through the sitting room when she heard the bump of the cat flap opening and closing. Then she heard the sound of Monty giving a weird-sounding miaow. Every hair on Kat’s scalp fizzed at the roots. Every knob of her spine froze. She knew what that was. That was a victory miaow. The sort of miaow a cat makes when it lands its prey and was about to show it off to its owners.

But Kat wasn’t his owner. She didn’t want to see his handiwork. No way. This was why she didn’t own a cat. This was why she didn’t even like cats. They brought in stuff, horrible stuff, like dead birds and...and...she couldn’t even think the word without wanting to jump on a chair and scream. Dread as cold as the snow falling outside chugged through her veins. A hedgehog climbed up her windpipe until she couldn’t take a breath. Fear tightened her chest, making her heart go into arrhythmia so bad any decent cardiologist would have rushed for a defibrillator.

Her eyes were glued to the door of the sitting room. It was like a scene in a Friday night fright film. She was frozen with primal fear, unable to move a step forward or a step back. Her feet were nailed to the floor. Monty made that muffled miaow again from just outside the sitting room, the miaow that sounded like he had his mouth full of...something.

No. No. No. Kat chanted manically. This couldn’t be happening. Not to her. Not on her first night in this lovely house. Lovely houses like this didn’t have dreadful, ghastly, horrid, unmentionable creatures inside them...

It was so quiet she could hear each soft pad of Monty’s paws on the carpet as he came round the door into the sitting room. Puft. Puft. Puft. Puft. Her eyes widened in horror when she saw what was dangling from his mouth. ‘Eeeeeek!’ She screamed so loudly she was vaguely aware she might shatter the chandeliers or windows. Or wake the neighbours. In France.

But then the stupid cat let the thing go. And it wasn’t dead! It streaked across the floor right next to Kat’s feet and disappeared under one of the sofas.

Kat bolted from the room so fast she could have qualified for the Olympics. She snapped the door shut behind her and fled to the front door, barely stopping long enough to grab her coat from the coat stand. She didn’t bother with gloves—she would never have been able to get them on her shaking hands. She had only taken one flying step out of the Carstairses’ house when she came face to face with Flynn, who was walking a weird-looking dog.

He frowned and steadied her with a hand on her arm. ‘Are you all right? I heard you screaming and—’

Kat pointed back at the house with a quaking finger. ‘In—in there... M-Monty brought in a...a...’

‘A what?’

‘I can’t say it,’ she said. ‘Please will you get rid of it for me? Please? I’ll never be able to sleep knowing it’s in there.’

‘What’s in there?’

Kat absolutely never cried. Not unless it was written in the script. Then she could do it, no problem. But fear colliding with relief that someone had come to her rescue made her want to throw herself on Flynn’s chest and howl like a febrile teething baby. She bit her bottom lip, sure she was going to bite right through before she could stop it trembling. ‘I—I have this thing...a phobia... I know it’s silly but I—I just can’t help it.’

He put his gloved hand on her shoulder. Even though there were layers of fabric between his skin and hers, she felt something warm and electric go right through her body from the top of her shoulder to the balls of her feet. ‘Did Monty bring in a mouse?’

Kat squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands over her ears. ‘Don’t say that word!’

His hand slipped down from her shoulder to take her bare hands in his gloved ones. ‘Look at me, Kat.’

Kat looked. But he wasn’t laughing at her. His expression was serious and concerned. ‘It got away from Monty,’ she said, almost wailing like a little kid. Waa-waa-waa. ‘It—it went under the sofa.’

He gave her freezing hands a warm squeeze. ‘I’ll deal with it, or at least Cricket and I will.’

‘Cricket?’

The little dog at Flynn’s feet yapped and spun around on his back legs as if on cue. He was not the sort of dog she was expecting someone like Flynn to own. She had expected some classy, Crufts-standard, purebred Malamute, a regal Great Dane or a velvet-smooth German pointer. Cricket wasn’t any bigger than a child’s football, was of indeterminate breed and looked like something out of a science fiction movie. His wiry coat was a caramel brown with little flecks of white that stood up at odd angles like they had been stuck on as an afterthought. He had one ear that stood up and one that flopped down, a thin, wiry tail that curled like a question mark over his back and a lower jaw that stuck out a few millimetres like a drawer that hadn’t been shut properly.

‘My right-hand man,’ Flynn said. ‘An expert at rodent-ectomies.’

Kat was almost limp with relief. ‘I’d be ever so grateful.’

‘Do you want to wait at my house while we get the business end of things sorted?’

Another groundswell of relief nearly knocked her off her feet, as if all her bones had been taken out of her body. ‘You wouldn’t mind?’

He smiled and looped her arm through one of his. ‘Come this way.’

Kat was beyond worrying about going all damsel-in-distress with him. She was in distress. She would have happily sat in an axe murderer’s house rather than face that...that creature under the sofa.

Besides, it was a perfect opportunity to have a look around Flynn’s house while he wasn’t there.

He unlocked the door and led her inside, telling her to make herself comfortable and that he’d be back soon. Cricket bounced at Flynn’s feet as if he knew he was in for some blood sport. Eeeww.

Once they were gone Kat had a peep around. It was much the same layout as the Carstairses’ house next door but, while the Carstairses’ was a family home with loads of photos and family memorabilia, there was nothing to show Flynn’s family of origin. There wasn’t a single photo anywhere. There were some quite lovely works of art, however. And some rather gorgeous pieces of antique furniture that suggested he was a bit of a traditionalist, rather than a man with strictly modern taste.

Kat found his study next door to the sitting room, which had a beautiful cedar desk and leather Chesterfield chair. There was a black Chesterfield sofa set in front of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The titles went from thick law tomes to the classics and history, with a smattering of modern titles, mostly crime and thrillers.

She went back into the sitting room and sat down at the grand piano that was set to one side of the room near the windows. She put her fingers to the keys, but all she could tinkle out was a nursery rhyme or two—but not Three Blind Unmentionables. Not exactly Royal Albert Hall standard, she thought with an embittered pang at what she could have had if her father had provided for her during her childhood. No doubt the Ravensdale siblings were all accomplished musicians. They had gone to fabulous schools and been taken on wonderful holidays with no expense spared.

What had she had?

A big, fat nothing. Which was why it was so hard to get established now. She was years behind her peers. She hadn’t had acting lessons until recently because she couldn’t afford them. She still couldn’t afford a voice coach. A Scottish accent was fine if that was what a play called for. But she needed to be versatile, and that came with training, and training was hideously expensive—at least, the good quality stuff was. She could join some amateur group but she didn’t want to be stuck as an extra in some unknown play in some way-out suburb’s community hall.

She wanted to be at the West End in London.

It had been her goal since she was a kid.

It wasn’t about the fame. Kat didn’t give a toss for the fame. It was about the acting. It had always been about the acting, of getting into character in real time. About being onstage. About being in that electric atmosphere of being engaged with a live audience, seeing their reactions, hearing them gasp in shock, laugh in amusement or cry with heartfelt emotion. It wasn’t the same, acting on a film set. The sequences were shot out of order. The camera had to come to you rather than onstage when you had to project your character to the audience.