The Cinderella Factor Read online

  Not just his leg, he thought with harsh self-mockery. As far as Jo Almond was concerned his judgement seemed to have taken a holiday, too.

  One moment she’s standing up to me, challenging me, even laughing at me, blast her cheek. The next I can’t get near her.

  I must be out of practice, he told himself, trying hard to be amused. But he could not quite banish the thought, darkly unwelcome, that followed it. Or I’m too old for her.

  Jo slept badly. Having tossed and turned through most of the hot night, she’d fallen asleep eventually in the small hours and woken up with the sheet tangled on the floor and the pillows grasped to her like a lover. She lay there, hot and tangled, and thought: this is a new one. Wow!

  She slid her long legs out of bed and padded over the floorboards to the window. The garden was deserted. It was too inviting to ignore.

  She dressed quickly and went outside.

  Birds trilled, but it was still too early for butterflies. When she walked on the grassy paths of the overgrown pleasaunce, her feet left footprints. The ornamental hedges were full of cobwebs, with the dew spangled along their threads like fairground illuminations. Drops of dew trembled on the edge of rose petals, just opening to the morning sun. The air was hazy with the promise of heat, but she could taste the early-morning breeze like the fizz of champagne on her tongue.

  Jo drew a long, luxurious breath of delight—and stopped abruptly as a tall figure detached itself from the deep shade of a trellis of scarlet roses.

  ‘Good morning,’ said a cool voice, just on this side of mockery. ‘You, too huh?’

  Jo squinted at Patrick Burns. ‘What?’

  ‘Another one who couldn’t sleep,’ he elucidated.

  Jo looked at him warily. ‘It was hot last night.’

  His lips twitched. ‘Was it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her tone said, Don’t mess with me.

  He took the hint. ‘I thought it was because I did too much driving yesterday,’ he informed her blandly. ‘But you think it was just the temperature?’

  Jo thought of that evocative scent on her pillows and could have killed him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her eyes daring him to dispute it further.

  His eyes danced. ‘If you say so,’ he murmured.

  ‘And it will be another scorching day today, too,’ she flung at him.

  ‘I’m sure you’re right. Speaking of which—time you got yourself some summer clothes.’ He fished in his pocket and brought out an envelope. He held it out to her.

  Jo looked at the envelope as if it were a sleeping scorpion. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Money.’

  ‘If you’ve got money to spend,’ said Jo waspishly, ‘you should do something about this poor garden. It’s straight out of a history book and you’re letting it be eaten alive by weeds. George and I do what we can, but it needs some proper loving care.’

  ‘Don’t we all?’ said Patrick ironically. ‘And your wardrobe, more than most. Take the money.’

  ‘I don’t want your money.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘And that should matter to me—why?’

  Jo ground her teeth. ‘I know,’ she said ironically. ‘Patrick’s house. Patrick’s law.’

  That startled him. ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what Crispin says,’ she told him with satisfaction.

  He chuckled. ‘I like my own way,’ he admitted shamelessly.

  ‘I’ll just bet you get it, too,’ said Jo, displeased.

  ‘Well, usually. But then I’m usually right.’

  He met her furious eyes and laughed gently.

  ‘Okay, okay. I won’t tease any more. But take the money. After all, employers usually pay change-of-location costs. And that often includes a suitable wardrobe.’

  She thought of rainy Manchester and her annoyance dissolved. ‘You have a point,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘We left in a hailstorm.’

  ‘There you are, then.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘But nothing.’ Patrick looked at her curiously. ‘Besides—wouldn’t you like some pretty clothes for a change? Something summery?’

  Jo knew what ‘summery’ meant. Lots of skin showing. She suddenly thought of blond and gorgeous Anne Marie, with her perfect legs and her sun-kissed skin. Five-foot-three blondes could wear cut-away tee shirts and floaty skirts even when heavily pregnant. Gargoyles with big shoulders and bigger feet ought to keep themselves covered up.

  She looked at him holding out the envelope. Smiling. Sure she was going to do whatever he told her to because she just couldn’t resist.

  It was too much.

  ‘No,’ she yelled.

  She struck his hand away. And ran.

  It did not end there, of course. After a couple of hours of car-cleaning therapy the Bugatti gleamed, and she went over to the kitchen for her usual morning coffee. And there was the envelope, in the middle of the big pine table.

  ‘Patrick left that for you,’ said Mrs Morrison unnecessarily. ‘He said you need new clothes.’

  Jo glowered. ‘Dungarees suit me fine,’ she muttered.

  ‘Patrick doesn’t think so.’

  And that was the end of the matter. If Patrick wanted his garage mechanic to wear pink tulle and roses in her hair, Mrs Morrison would think he was quite right, thought Jo wrathfully.

  ‘He said take the car and go to Lacombe. He wants you to buy a skirt and get your hair done. But be back by one. He has to go to Toulouse this afternoon and he wants to see you before he goes. He’s ordered Luc from the village to drive him, for once. He said you insisted.’ She beamed at Jo. ‘You’ve done a great job there.’

  Jo snarled.

  Muttering, she went off to Lacombe and came back with the most severe skirt she could find. It was not designed for someone as tall as she was, and left too much leg bare. But there was nothing she could do about that.

  The new hair was worse. The stylist had taken one horrified look at the nail-scissor cut and set about a major restructuring exercise. The result was a very short chestnut cap that gleamed.

  Mrs Morrison was impressed when Jo went to the kitchen to report.

  ‘I look—girly,’ said Jo, making a face at herself in the mirror. She was half revolted, half fascinated.

  ‘Well, you look less like a wild thing of the woods,’ drawled Patrick, strolling into the kitchen unannounced. ‘Oh, look—it’s got ears!’

  Jo went scarlet and wished that the floor would swallow her up. The Morrisons did not notice.

  ‘She looks very pretty,’ agreed Mrs Morrison. Adding, which didn’t help at all, ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘Don’t,’ snapped Jo. ‘It just encourages him.’

  Patrick ignored that. He strolled over and took her chin in his long fingers, turning her head this way and that—as if, she thought, outraged, he was thinking of buying it.

  ‘Very nice,’ he decided.

  She eyeballed him. ‘Am I supposed to be flattered?’

  Patrick met her eyes with deep appreciation. ‘Not yet,’ he said enigmatically.

  Jo was deeply suspicious. ‘Are you flirting with me?’

  Patrick laughed gently. ‘Trying to. Merely trying to.’ And he turned her chin very gently, so that he could admire her profile. ‘Is it working?’

  George Morrison and his wife exchanged a startled look. Jo did not even notice.

  She did notice that something was flittering about under her ribcage, as if her heart had come unmoored and started to doggy paddle.

  She could have danced with rage. She shook her chin out of Patrick’s grasp and stepped away from him.

  ‘No, it isn’t. Did you want me?’ she said frostily.

  Well, it was supposed to be frosty. But even before the words were out she heard how equivocal they were. Oh, God, how naïve could you be? She went scarlet to her newly revealed ears.

  Patrick watched in deep appreciation. ‘That depends,’ he said suavely.

  Behind him, George Morrison pursed his lips i
n a silent whistle and spun his wheelchair round.

  ‘Better come and tell me which lettuce you want cut for supper,’ he told his wife firmly. And, as she hesitated, watching Jo anxiously, ‘Now.’

  Jo did not even hear them go.

  ‘Depends on what?’ she demanded, glowering and trying to ignore the heat in her face.

  Patrick was bland. ‘On how good your driving is.’

  Jo stuck her nose in the air. ‘If it’s got wheels, I can drive it,’ she said with total confidence.

  ‘Then you shall drive me to Toulouse,’ said Patrick in the congratulatory tones with which fairy godmothers said, Yes Cinderella, you shall go to the ball.

  Jo was speechless.

  The Mercedes was waiting on the sunlit gravel. The top was already down. She looked an aristocrat to her hubcaps. For a moment, Jo faltered.

  Not so Patrick. ‘Let’s go, then.’

  He slipped on sunglasses and then, to Jo’s amazement, opened the driver’s door for her as if she were a queen. She scrambled in, all legs and elbows, knocking a map to the floor. Patrick bent and handed her the car keys courteously.

  For a moment she felt his breath against her cheek. Oh, there was that cologne again! The warmth of his body was as heady as the scent of the lavender fields she had walked past on her way from the village.

  If she could have seen his eyes, would they have shown the same shock that she felt? But they were masked by the black lenses. Without the eyes, his face was an enigma. She could not guess what he was feeling. If he was feeling anything at all.

  Patrick produced a battered panama hat and pulled it on before getting in beside her. He looked critically at her bare head. ‘We must get you a hat.’

  Jo decided not to argue. She had bigger things to worry about. She drew a deep breath and turned on the ignition.

  She need not have worried. The car was a dream to drive. And Patrick, against the odds, turned out to be a dream of a passenger, too. He gave her clear directions on where to turn, but never once criticised her driving or caught his breath when he thought she should have braked.

  When they pulled into the drive of a large mansion that announced itself as an orthopaedic therapy clinic, she congratulated him.

  ‘Thank you. I do my best,’ he murmured.

  But Jo knew from the way one corner of his mouth turned up that he was teasing her again. Her mouth twitched in response.

  She brought the car to a gentle halt in the car park behind the mansion. Handbrake on. Out of gear. Switch off engine. She turned to him, eyes gleaming.

  ‘I did it!’ she said, gleeful.

  ‘You did indeed,’ he agreed. ‘Was there any doubt? I thought if it had wheels you could drive it?’

  ‘Old bangers,’ said Jo, waving a hand airily. ‘Never a car like this. I’ll confess now. I had a few butterflies.’

  ‘Believe me, it didn’t show.’ He took off his sunglasses. His eyes were almost tender. ‘You’re something else, Jo Almond. Do you know that?’

  She ducked her head then, laughing, not looking at him directly. But inside she felt warmed.

  He sighed, as if he were reluctant to get out of the car. ‘Oh, well. I’ll be here for an hour or so.’

  ‘What sort of therapy are you having?’ He was so mellow, Jo reasoned, she could probably ask without getting her head bitten off.

  She was right. He grimaced, but he did not crunch her.

  ‘My London doctor recommended physiotherapy here. So I’m off to be stretched and pounded.’

  ‘Good luck,’ said Jo.

  He got out. ‘Town’s that way,’ he added, with meaning. ‘They’ll have a better selection of clothes than Lacombe, I imagine.’

  Jo did not take the hint. Instead she wandered round, savouring the sunshine and having someone to meet later. It was like the sense of having a place and people to go home to when her day in town was over. This must be what being in a real family was like, she thought. Though it was odd to think of Patrick Burns as family. He was not brother or uncle material. She chuckled at the thought.

  But it reminded her that it was two days since she called Mark. She went to a café and ordered iced coffee, then went to the public phone while the friendly waiter fetched it.

  Mark was happy as a lark. He had learned to milk goats and he had gone swimming at the lake, where a local diving club had been practising. So he had had a try-out for it and they’d said he could be good. Jo had never heard him bubbling over like that. Tears of gratitude pricked her eyes.

  Jacques came on the line. ‘He is very well, Jo. We are all very well. But if he is serious about this diving we will need his guardian’s permission. I think I had better call Madame Grey.’

  Jo went cold. ‘No!’

  ‘But, Jo, he will have to talk to her sometime. Nobody will make him go back to that dreadful, drunken man. But his aunt…’

  ‘She’s worse,’ said Jo fiercely.

  Jacques sighed. ‘Well, we can talk about this later. There is no hurry. When will we see you?’

  ‘My boss has just come back from abroad. I don’t know when my day off is yet. Jacques, promise me you won’t talk to Carol.’

  He hesitated. ‘She should know that Mark is safe.’

  ‘Promise me.’

  ‘I will not call her until I see you,’ he said. But his tone made it clear that he was not happy.

  Her coffee tasted of sawdust. Then she lost her way when she left the café. She was late back.

  Even so, Patrick was not ready. Monsieur Burns, said an elegant receptionist who disapproved of Jo’s crumpled cotton, was still with Monsieur Lamartine. He was scheduled to stay in the clinic overnight, according to their records.

  Shaken out of her preoccupation, Jo suppressed a grin.

  ‘I think you’ll find Mr Burns has other ideas.’

  The disapproval turned to frost. Jo was given to understand that Monsieur Lamartine was second only to God. His instructions were ineffable, unchallengeable and guided only by the good of the patient. No one—no one—disobeyed them. Mr Burns, in fact, would do as he was told.

  ‘I’ll wait,’ said Jo. She was beginning to have a fair idea of what Mr Burns would do in most circumstances.

  So she was not surprised when in less than ten minutes a lift door swished open and Patrick, accompanied by two gesticulating people, limped out. His expression was one she knew. Jo deduced that he was being as awkward as he knew how.

  She was aware of a sneaking pride in him, standing out against the full might of the Beverly Hills receptionist and the all-powerful Monsieur Lamartine. That’s my boy!

  ‘My dear Patrick, you are out of your mind,’ she heard one of his companions say.

  He was a neat man of medium height, with grey hair and a grey beard. From the receptionist’s instant air of reverence, Jo concluded that this was the God-like Lamartine.

  ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘You could delay your recovery,’ his doctor told him with brutal frankness. ‘Intensive physiotherapy, that’s what you need. If you did your exercises it would be different. But you don’t. Residential is much the best. I thought you wanted to get back to work?’

  ‘I can work at home,’ Patrick said. ‘I can’t work here, with your staff busybodying around me all the time.’

  ‘But they adore you!’

  Patrick gave him a wry look. ‘Quite.’

  ‘You are an ungrateful devil and an unregenerate rake,’ Monsieur Lamartine told him. But he was laughing. ‘You shouldn’t charm the hearts out of my nurses.’

  Patrick shook his head. ‘It’s the charm of television,’ he said. ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  Patrick’s other companion now took a hand. It was a soft hand, with perfect painted nails, almond-shaped and lacquered to the colour of bronze.

  ‘Patrick, darling, do you think you are being very sensible?’ she said in a husky voice.

  Jo went very still. Patrick darling?

  She saw a tall, beautif
ul woman, with a cloud of pure Titian hair and a creamy skin that seemed younger than the worldly expression round her eyes. She was dressed in a simple black dress piped with amber. Jo did not know anything about clothes, but she realised with a little shock that the dress must be very expensive indeed. It looked like something out of a film. A very elegant film.

  Jo, studying her first seriously groomed woman up close, thought that she was a work of art. It must have taken hours to get that effect of flawless skin and wide-opened eyes. The cosmetics did not show, but Jo would have put money on there being several layers of them.

  And this was the woman who called Patrick Burns darling? Jo suddenly felt very cold.

  Patrick, however, was not showing any signs of major attraction. In fact, he was beginning to look strained.

  ‘Don’t start again, Isabelle,’ he said wearily. ‘I’ve got everything I need at the château.’

  For the first time his eyes skimmed Jo’s. She was almost certain that he winked. But he looked away so fast she could not be completely certain.

  Isabelle said, ‘I will drive you. I brought my car this morning especially. We can have someone pick the Mercedes up later.’

  It sounded so intimate. Almost domestic. As if they had done this before. As if—Jo said it to herself deliberately, knowing she had to remember this—they were a couple.

  Patrick looked as if he were going to explode. ‘I’m not a complete idiot. I brought a driver with me.’

  And he indicated Jo.

  Two pairs of eyes turned in her direction. Two faces expressed varying degrees of astonishment, doubt and displeasure.

  Isabelle said, ‘Darling, don’t be absurd. You can’t let this child drive you anywhere.’

  Patrick’s mouth curled. ‘Jo has joined the residential staff,’ he said blandly. ‘She looks after the cars.’

  ‘The cars? Godfrey’s beautiful vintage cars?’ Isabelle sounded horrified.

  Monsieur Lamartine’s eyebrows had climbed, too. But now there was a look of dawning amusement on his face. ‘Unregenerate rake,’ he repeated softly, on a note of unholy amusement.

  Patrick’s face tightened. So too, more obviously, did Isabelle’s.

  ‘On the residential staff? You mean she’s living in the château?’ This time, the elegant beauty was more than horrified. She was angry.