The Cinderella Factor Page 12

  Patrick leaned on the car door and touched his hand against her cheek. Jo quivered. An electric shock would have been milder, she thought, shaken.

  ‘You look hot,’ he said softly. ‘It will be cool by the river.’

  She might look hot, thought Jo. But she was shivering. In fact, she was shivering so hard she was surprised he did not see it.

  ‘Come along,’ he said, in such a tender, serious voice that her eyes prickled with unexpected tears. She, who never cried!

  And she, who never went into anything she wasn’t certain she could get out of, said, ‘Yes,’ in a suffocated voice.

  Patrick leaned into the car and switched off the engine. His arm nearly brushed her breast. So nearly, Jo felt as if she had forgotten how to breathe. Silently, he opened her door for her. Jo got out as if she were in a dream.

  Keep your exit route open, she reminded herself feverishly. Keep your exit route open.

  But what good were exit routes in a dream?

  They walked to the bridge. He did not touch her, though she more than half expected it. She held herself tensely.

  ‘Relax. I’m in no physical condition to throw you to the ground and ravish you.’ There was an edge to Patrick’s voice. ‘Nothing to worry about here.’

  She stuck her nose in the air. ‘I’m not. And you’d never worry me, anyway. If I can’t run I can always fight. And I fight dirty.’

  Patrick flung back his head and roared so hard that he had to stop while he put his hand to his side, shaking with mirth.

  ‘I’ll just bet you do,’ he said, when he could speak. No edge to his voice now. Just deep appreciation. ‘Come on. There should be a seat here somewhere. I used to bring Tolkein down here.’

  He forged his way through an undergrowth of hawthorn, hazel and weeds. Jo followed cautiously. But he always paused to hold back a trailing branch for her, or lift her over a place where small streams turned the undergrowth to mud.

  ‘Very Tarzan,’ said Jo, more breathless than her exertions really required.

  ‘Aren’t I just?’ he said, setting her down, his eyes wicked.

  They found the place he was looking for. It was an elderly tree, and at some time someone had placed a circular iron seat round its trunk. Two sections of this had rusted and collapsed, but one was still standing.

  Patrick sat on it and straightened his injured leg out in front of him. Jo dropped onto the mossy riverbank beside him. The cascading branches at her back tangled in her short hair. She crossed her legs in front of her.

  The water lapped peacefully against the bank under the shelter of the tree. There was a smell of sun-dried grasses and herbs.

  Jo sighed with pleasure.

  ‘This is a perfect place,’ she murmured.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed, detaching trailing willow fronds from her hair with an idle hand.

  It was rather pleasant, Jo decided. Like being stroked.

  ‘Tell me about your family?’ she asked. ‘I mean, is this your family home?’

  ‘Specify family.’

  She was puzzled. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You really don’t read the profiles, do you?’ He sounded amused again. ‘It’s public knowledge. My mother is a political hostess by metier. She’s been through four politicians of various potential since I was born.’ He paused, then said reflectively, ‘There was a time when I couldn’t go into the Senate dining room in Washington without bumping into a couple of ex-stepfathers. Home was wherever the present one was campaigning.’

  It was so far from everything Jo knew she could hardly imagine it. She said curiously, ‘Wasn’t that odd?’

  ‘I didn’t know it was odd,’ Patrick pointed out, stretching his long legs in front of him and locking his linked hands behind his neck. He looked up through the leaves of the willow. ‘I learned to travel light and take my treasures with me. That stood me in good stead as a foreign correspondent. I guess you could say the château is the first home I’ve ever had.’

  ‘Why France?’

  Patrick grimaced. ‘My godfather took his responsibilities seriously. He said stepfathers could come and go but a godfather was for life. I used to holiday here with him a lot. When he died he left it to me.’

  ‘Are you going to live here?’

  He was suddenly serious. ‘If you’d asked me six months ago I’d have said not a chance. I thought of turning it into an up-market hotel. Conference centre with swimming pool thrown in. Golf course and horse riding on tap. You know the sort of thing.’

  Jo didn’t. But she could guess. It was a style of life that she had only read about in other people’s discarded glossy magazines.

  She looked at the water, half rueful, half sad. Nothing could have made it more obvious how far apart their worlds were. Patrick Burns was so used to that degree of luxury that he assumed everyone else would recognise it, too.

  She did not reply. But her mouth twitched a little. Patrick saw it at once.

  ‘No, stupid of me,’ he said softly. ‘Of course you don’t.’

  There it was again, that fast tuning in to her thoughts. It was unsettling.

  She said quickly, ‘What made you change your mind? About turning it into a hotel, I mean?’

  There was a little pause, as if he was debating whether to answer her or to insist on pursuing his own line of interest. But in the end, he decided to answer.

  ‘I’m not sure I have,’ he said slowly. ‘But—well, I might need a family home sometime soon.’

  At once, like a snake striking, the thought hit her: Isabelle? Then—surely not? He said it wasn’t going to happen.

  That was a thought that Patrick did not tune in to notice, though. He was absorbed in his own line of thought. ‘Everyone says I’m crazy.’ He looked down at her broodingly. ‘I wonder what your take would be?’ he mused.

  Jo hugged her knees. ‘Try me,’ she said dryly, as he had said to her.

  He said, as if the decision surprised him, ‘All right. I will. I want to adopt a child. What do you think of that?’

  Jo’s first reaction was a huge rush of relief. Not Isabelle, then. Then she actually thought about it. ‘Adopt? Why? More important, who?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘I was right about you. You ask the right questions. None of my clever lawyers did.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jo. ‘I think. Does that mean I’m not clever or not a lawyer?’

  He gave a crack of laughter. ‘Don’t fish for compliments. You’re too sharp by half, that’s what you are, as Nanny Morrison would say.’

  Jo smiled. ‘So, who is this child you want to adopt?’

  ‘He’s an orphan. He has no home, no family, and damn little food. For the moment, he’s living in a refugee centre in the mountains. He saved my life.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I went to do an interview in a small town. It was a set-up. As soon as my cameraman and I arrived all the shoppers melted away and a couple of snipers opened up. I was sitting at a café in the middle of the square. I was a sitting duck.’ It was chilling, the matter-of-fact way he said it.

  Jo put her hand on his knee, as much to reassure herself that he was there, flesh and blood, as to offer comfort. His hand closed over hers, strongly.

  ‘I flung myself to the ground, with my hands over the back of my neck. But I thought it was the end for me. Then this child—Pavli—just ran out from the shops and sat beside me. He was one of them, you see. A local. His parents had been killed in the bombardment only a few weeks before. None of the snipers was going to risk killing him. So he saved me.’

  ‘What is he like?’

  Patrick intertwined his fingers with hers, almost absently. ‘Do you know, I’m not really sure? We communicate in bad French. Brave, of course. Very resourceful. He took charge of a bunch of refugees. I helped them get over the border. He’s kind to people.’ He looked down at their twined fingers. ‘I owe him,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jo, moved.

  He
looked up, suddenly eager. ‘So you don’t think I’m crazy, wanting to adopt him?’

  Jo said carefully, ‘I don’t know. What does Pavli want?’

  It shattered Patrick. ‘I don’t know. I never asked—I assumed.’ He released her fingers and pushed his hand through his hair. ‘Surely life would be better for him with me? The opportunities…’ But she could see that he was struggling for his arguments.

  She said gently, ‘Why do you want him? Just because you owe him?’

  Patrick stared at her. All the conflicting emotions were plain to read in his face.

  ‘From my experience,’ said Jo very softly, ‘a child should go where he feels he has a place. All the rest is incidental.’

  Patrick stared, as if he was concentrating his whole being on her words.

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘No one should be a charity case all their lives,’ said Jo with feeling. ‘Pavli has other people he has helped besides you. That makes them a sort of family of fellow sufferers. Are you going to adopt them all?’

  ‘No,’ he said, arrested.

  She shrugged. It was more eloquent than words.

  ‘I…see,’ he said on a slow note of comprehension. ‘Yes, I see. Oh, wise young judge!’ He stirred. ‘And where did you learn so much about people, Jo? From the boyfriend who got first claim on the place to stay?’

  She almost jumped. She had forgotten that she had unwarily referred to Mark and he had inferred he was her boyfriend.

  ‘No. Myself mainly. And my foster brother.’

  He waited, but she didn’t say anything else.

  ‘You don’t give a lot away, do you, Jo? Are you close, you and this brother?’

  She hesitated, suddenly alert. She did not really believe Patrick would give them away if she told him about Mark. But it wasn’t her secret alone.

  ‘We don’t see a lot of each other,’ she said uncommunicatively.

  ‘So you’re solitary?’ he remarked. ‘Another thing we have in common.’ And he leaned forward and smiled straight down into her wary eyes.

  Jo froze.

  ‘No ties,’ he elaborated softly. ‘No one close. Relying only on ourselves. Keeping the rest of the world at arm’s length.’

  She could not tear her eyes away from his.

  ‘Soul mates, one might almost say.’ It was half mocking, half another one of his obscure challenges. ‘I told you we had more in common than you thought.’

  Jo felt her breathing quicken.

  ‘I don’t see that we’re alike at all,’ she said, too quickly and too loudly. ‘You’re rich. And famous.’

  He was watching her quizzically. ‘Am I?’

  She glared. ‘Well, aren’t you? Everyone keeps telling me you are.’

  His smile grew. ‘But you’ve never heard of me,’ he pointed out softly. ‘I can’t be that famous, can I?’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it. I don’t see TV often—’ She broke off, realising too late how neatly he had got that admission out of her. ‘Oh!’

  She pressed her hands to her hot cheeks, hating him.

  He stretched lazily. ‘It’s okay. I knew you’d never heard of me.’

  Her blush subsided. But not her annoyance. She had been so careful to hide it! ‘How?’ she demanded, truculent.

  He paused, considering. ‘Something about the eyes, I think.’

  ‘Oh, pu-lease.’

  ‘Believe it. When you look at me, you see a stranger.’

  Jo stared. ‘So?’

  ‘Most people don’t,’ he said simply. ‘I’ve been in their living rooms too often.’

  ‘Oh.’

  His mouth twisted. ‘Half of them think they own a piece of me.’ He looked at her, not teasing any more. ‘You didn’t.’

  Jo’s mouth dried. She tore her eyes away from his and stood up abruptly.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be getting back? Aren’t you supposed to rest your leg?’

  He ignored that. ‘Are fame and riches really so important, Jo?’

  ‘They make a difference,’ she said quickly. ‘Of course they do.’

  ‘In what way? How differently would you feel about me if I were poor?’

  Her heart fluttered furiously. ‘I don’t feel anything about you!’

  Patrick was not offended. He laughed gently.

  ‘Then it hasn’t made any difference, has it? Unless you’re saying that you would have felt something if I hadn’t been rich and famous…’ He left it hanging in the air. Not quite a question. More an implication.

  Jo set her teeth. Another trap. ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’

  ‘But it was what you said,’ he pointed out. ‘Very revealing, what people say.’

  Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Her eyes narrowed to slits. ‘This is what you do for a living, isn’t it? Interrogate people. Tie them up in knots.’

  ‘Have I tied you up in knots, Jo?’ There was a smile in his voice.

  She shoved her hands hard into her pockets.

  ‘Stop it,’ she said angrily. ‘Just stop it. I know you think this is funny. But it’s not fair.’

  He squinted up at her. She did not know it, but the sun, filtered through the willow leaves, struck ruby lights from her chestnut hair. She was trembling.

  She knew she was trembling. With fury. Jo assured herself that it was fury.

  ‘Why isn’t it fair?’ It was his furry purry tiger voice. Slow and warm and so damned easy to respond to…Jo felt it slide down her spine like melting treacle.

  ‘You’re too good at this,’ she wailed.

  ‘This?’

  She made a small despairing gesture. ‘Please, don’t.’

  ‘But it’s so much fun,’ he murmured provocatively, not moving.

  Jo stiffened a spine that was turning to toffee. ‘Then it shouldn’t be,’ she told him honestly. ‘I’m no match for you.’ And the moment after, she thought: I wish I hadn’t said that.

  Patrick looked sardonic.

  ‘I’m not,’ she insisted, trying to retrieve her mistake. ‘I don’t know enough. Don’t understand enough. Haven’t got your education, experience…’

  He laughed at her openly.

  Jo sought for something that would stop him looking at her like that. ‘I haven’t got a single GCSE,’ she flung at him.

  The laughter faltered. A dark eyebrow flicked up. ‘Is that an underhand way of reminding me that you’re only just out of school?’

  Jo looked at him with disgust. ‘I’ve been out of school for years.’

  ‘But you’re only nineteen. I’m too old for you, aren’t I, Jo?’

  Patrick was mocking himself, but there was something about his eyes that made her say swiftly, ‘I reckon there are three ages: child, adolescent, grown-up. I am a grown-up. Have been for a long, long time.’

  Their eyes locked.

  At last, he said evenly, ‘You are so sane, aren’t you? Sane and practical and kind. You’re a rare creature, Jo Almond.’

  But he did not touch her. Not even when he stood up and gave an involuntary grimace of pain. Jo made a move as if to give him her arm. But his expression was so forbidding that her hand fell to her side.

  He did not say another word as she drove back to the château. When they arrived she swept the car up to the heavily studded main door and turned to him with a grin of triumph.

  ‘Very stylish,’ said Patrick. ‘You shall drive me again.’

  As if he could not help himself, he stretched out his hand and touched her hair.

  ‘A leaf,’ he said, tossing it away. ‘Jo—will you have dinner with me tonight?’

  She hesitated. ‘I haven’t got the clothes for going out to a restaurant,’ she demurred.

  ‘Whose fault is that?’ he said, his eyes full of tender laughter. ‘But I accept that you wouldn’t enjoy it. Here, then.’

  Mrs Morrison warned me off, she thought. This must be exactly what she was worried about. Aloud, she said, ‘I wouldn’t want to upset the Morrisons.’

/>   Patrick was impatient. ‘Nor would I. Why should it matter to them?’

  Jo snorted. ‘I’m an employee. They’re employees of much longer standing. Work it out.’

  He flung up his hands. ‘Okay. Okay. A picnic in the rose garden. Will that solve the problem?’

  Jo felt an idiot. ‘I suppose so.’

  Patrick gave a hoot of sardonic laughter. ‘I’ve had more enthusiastic dates. You are a real education, you know that?’

  ‘Just as well. You can do with some educating about people,’ said Jo smartly. She did not like being laughed at like that.

  She thought he would snap back. But now that she had accepted him he was positively jolly. ‘Add it to your job description. Care of vintage cars and introduction of employer to human sympathy,’ he said mischievously. ‘I’ll increase your salary and then you can afford to buy a stunning dress that I can take you out to dine in.’

  Jo eyed him unflatteringly. ‘You think you have the answer to everything, don’t you?’

  ‘Yup. Pretty much.’ He leaned across and, before she knew what he intended, kissed her cheek lightly. ‘See you among the roses. Eight-thirty. Don’t be late.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  NINETEEN!

  Patrick slammed his fist into his bedroom wall.

  Of course, Jo Almond was nineteen. He had to remember that.

  Oh, she sounded as mature as anyone he knew. More mature than most. She made the ladies’ cloakroom coven look like a bunch of giggling schoolgirls. She was cool-headed as a veteran. Resourceful. Strong and brave and—

  …and nineteen!

  From the first moment he’d seen her, playing like a young otter in the stream, he had known. It was as if she was in a country he could never go back to. She was nineteen and he was thirty-four going on five hundred.

  In the car today he had seen the difference between them even more clearly. That guileless honesty! That skin…

  In his years as a journalist he had seen human nature at its vilest. Now he reminded himself of some of the details deliberately. You didn’t see what he had seen and stay guileless. Oh, he tried to be honest—but it was a long time since he had filed a report that told the simple truth without thinking about the consequences.