The Last Woman He'd Ever Date (Mills & Boon Modern Tempted) Read online

  ‘That would explain why you appeared to be so shocked that she would drop everything to meet me here this morning.’

  ‘Not at all.’ That wasn’t what had shocked her and they both knew it. ‘Let’s face it, you’re not some nobody to be fobbed off on a local reporter. You’re…’

  ‘Mr Mean?’ he offered when she hesitated.

  She’d hesitated because she’d been going to say ‘the lord of the manor’ but Sir Robert had always had time for her. Unlike Hal North, who had mocked her lack of ambition and then used his power to take her away from the news desk. Sideline her.

  Taking her silence for agreement, he said, ‘You’re a local reporter, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not much of one according to you.’

  ‘You’ve sharpened up your act since then.’

  ‘I took your advice, Hal. Nothing personal.’

  ‘I think Mr Mean is about as personal as it gets, Claire. The fact that you haven’t been back to see Archie, asked Gary to deliver your cake, suggests you’re aware of that.’

  ‘I told you, I’ve been busy. There’s so much to do in the garden at this time of year.’

  ‘I know. The contractor is going to be clearing the rose garden next week.’

  ‘Hal!’

  He said nothing.

  ‘Didn’t you contact any of the rose specialists I sent you?’

  ‘I’ve been busy. I have a company to run, as well as a house to restore.’

  ‘And motorcycles to play with.’

  ‘That, too.’

  ‘I’ll do it for you—’

  ‘Not unless you can wave your magic wand. You’re going to be far too busy granting other people’s wishes to work on your own.’

  Working with Hal North Rule Number One: Keep it businesslike.

  ‘We’d better get on with it, then. I’ll see if the conference room is free. How do you take your coffee?’

  ‘Not from a machine,’ he replied. The hand at her elbow tightened imperceptibly as he began to steer her firmly in the direction of the door.

  The heat increased a degree, tingling dangerously.

  Claire told herself that it was anger rather than attraction. The sizzle that seemed to fry the air whenever they were in the same room was real enough, but he wasn’t interested in her. Nor, she suspected, was he interested in the Wish project.

  Whatever fairy tale he’d told Willow Armstrong his return to Cranbrook Park was tied up with what Sir Robert had done to him. What her father had done to him.

  He’d dealt with Sir Robert, but her father wasn’t alive to answer for his actions. Apparently she was going to have to stand in for him.

  Working with Hal North Rule Number Two: Keep it totally businesslike.

  She pointedly removed her elbow from his hand. ‘I’ll call your office and arrange a formal meeting at the Hall.’

  She didn’t wait for his agreement but walked back to her desk and began tossing all her belongings into her bag.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Tim said to nobody in particular, ‘that was a turn up for the book. The ambitious Miss Thackeray reduced to a playing Tinkerbell.’

  ‘Book? What book?’ she asked, refusing to rise to the bait. ‘I didn’t realise you had ever read a book, at least not one without pictures.’

  ‘Sweet. Does Henry North have any idea what he’s getting himself in for? The man must be a glutton for punishment.’

  ‘Have a care, Tim, or I’ll wave my wand and turn you into a frog.’ She turned to look at him, then put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, noooo… Someone’s already done that.’

  She gave him a little wave, put her bag over her shoulder and went through to collect Alice who was safely tucked up in the library working on a project under the eye of one of the juniors who was on filing duty.

  ‘Come on, sweetheart.’ She’d held off Hal North for the moment, but he wouldn’t stay held off for long.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘NOT rushing off on my account, I hope.’

  ‘Oh, sugar!’ The betraying words slipped out as Hal North straightened from the wall he’d been leaning against, out of sight until she was through the front door.

  ‘That was heartfelt. Why do I get the feeling that if you’d realised I was waiting you’d have left by the rear entrance?’

  ‘Why on earth would I sneak out the back way?’ Claire demanded, all the more indignant because it was true.

  ‘I don’t know. The words “rabbit” and “headlights” came to mind when you saw me in your space for a change.’

  ‘You’re the one who avoids the press.’

  ‘Oh, it was merely surprise? I thought perhaps you were worried that having poked your stick into my wasp’s nest—’

  ‘Don’t worry, Hal, I get it,’ she said. ‘I’ve been stung.’

  He hadn’t complained about her, hadn’t got her the sack. Instead, he’d got her taken off the news desk, placed at his beck and call for weeks on end and had himself officially transformed from Mr Mean into Mr Generous at a stroke.

  There would be no more snarky headlines written by her, or anyone else.

  A result in anyone’s language.

  ‘So, coffee,’ she said briskly. ‘Shall we try the café in the craft centre? It’s Ally’s favourite.’

  ‘Ally?’

  Ally, fed up with being taken to one boring place after another, having to be quiet and well-behaved instead of having fun like everyone else at half term, had been dragging her heels behind her, sliding down the wall with a sigh when she’d seen her mom stop to talk to someone. Not complaining, but thoroughly fed up.

  Well, that was all about to change.

  ‘Come and say hello to Mr North, sweetheart, he’s going to buy you a milkshake.’

  ‘A milkshake?’ She scrambled to her feet, looked up at Hal. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously. You deserve one.’ She picked up Hal’s long, thoughtful look, smiled. ‘I did give you every chance.’

  ‘No. That would have meant you’d told me that you had your little girl with you,’ he said in the same pleasant tone, his own smile pitch perfect. Then, before she could let him off the hook, tell him that she was going to drop her off at Penny’s for the afternoon he turned to Ally and said, ‘Tell me, Alice, is your heart set on a milkshake at the craft centre? Or could I possibly tempt you to lunch by the river?’

  ‘Penny’s making you lunch,’ Claire said before she could answer. ‘Spaghetti with meatballs. Your favourite,’ she added, to soften the blow.

  ‘But what about the milkshake?’ she asked, with a confused little frown. Ally did a very good confused little frown.

  ‘I’ll make you one when I get home.’

  ‘It’s not the same,’ she said. ‘You can’t make it so thick that you can hardly suck it through the straw.’

  ‘Penny? Would that be Penny Harker?’ Hal asked, rescuing her before she was promising double, triple scoops of strawberry ice cream in the shake. ‘Gary’s mother?’

  ‘Yes. Of course you know her.’

  ‘I know why she couldn’t work this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Why she won’t work full-time.’

  ‘You asked her to work full-time?’ Claire was shocked. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Well you do now so the least you can do is call and tell her you won’t need her to babysit this afternoon. Make everyone’s day.’

  His day, Penny’s day, Ally’s day. She wasn’t so sure about hers…

  Leaving her to it, he turned to Ally and with the utmost seriousness said, ‘Tell me, Alice, is the Birdcage still the best place in town for lunch?’

  Ally’s eyes widened. ‘The Birdcage? Is that the place that looks like a birdcage? That has birds? In cages.’

  ‘That sounds like the place.’

  ‘I’m not sure I approve of birds in cages,’ she said. ‘Can they fly about? Not just hop around like Savannah’s budgie?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask your mother? She used to go there all the time when she was your age.
’

  ‘I went there once!’ Claire said, with a glare that warned him that making plans for her was one thing, making them with her daughter was quite another. ‘And there is still a problem.’

  ‘Why am I not surprised?’ There was nothing in his voice, his manner to betray him and yet she sensed his impatience. He had a plan and she was messing with it. Tough. ‘If you’re worried about timekeeping I’ll swear it was a working lunch.’

  ‘What else would it be?’ she snapped. Dammit, lunch with Hal should have been… Nothing. ‘Unfortunately, and I’m really sorry about this—’ it wouldn’t hurt to apologise, no matter how insincerely ‘—but I imagine you were planning on going by car?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to walk,’ he said, using the fob he was holding to unlock the doors of a glossy black Range Rover parked at the kerb.

  ‘Well, that’s it, you see. Ally doesn’t have her booster seat with her and, as I’m sure you know, it’s against the law for a child to travel in a car without one.’ She waited for the count of three. ‘I suppose, if your heart really is set on The Birdcage, we could catch the bus?’

  ‘The bus?’ Hal appeared to consider it. ‘That’s a possibility,’ he said. ‘Or Alice could use the booster seat that Bea had fitted for her little girl.’

  He lifted an eyebrow, inviting her to counter his check.

  Claire had none to offer. Her only thought was that the plum-voiced Ms Webb had a daughter who visited often enough for Hal to need a booster seat in his car.

  No more than her journalistic antenna twitching. His relationships were news. There was no other reason for her to be interested. At all.

  ‘Well…’ she said. ‘How great is that, Ally? I wasn’t much older than you the one time I went to the Birdcage.’ Emphasis on the ‘one.’

  ‘My mistake,’ Hal said, as he lifted Ally up. She scrambled across onto the booster seat and quickly fastened her seat belt before any more objections were raised. ‘Your mother talked about it so much that I assumed it must be a regular event. According to my mother,’ he stressed, presumably to establish that he was not in the habit of gossiping with her mother. As if. ‘Didn’t you have a good time?’

  She concentrated on checking Ally’s seat belt then shut the door before turning to face Hal. ‘Truthfully?’

  ‘What else?’ he asked.

  ‘I hated every minute of it.’

  ‘Really? Well, you weren’t with me on that occasion,’ he said as he opened the passenger door for her.

  ‘My mother would never have invited you out to tea with a bunch of little girls.’

  ‘With or without,’ he agreed, with a wry smile. ‘I was definitely not her type, a sentiment I returned with interest. But little girls would have been safe enough.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. You had bigger fish to fry.’

  She caught his eye and despite doing her best to be cool, she discovered that what she wanted to do most of all was smile right back at him.

  Despite the bad start, the prospect of lunch with Hal North at a pretty riverside restaurant had a ridiculously uplifting effect on her. Which was, well, ridiculous.

  ‘Let’s see,’ she said, doing her best to keep her feet firmly planted on the ground. She had to remember that he hated her father, was messing with her career and she knew practically nothing about his life since he’d left Cranbrook Park. Who knew what ulterior motive was driving him? ‘It was my eighth birthday so you must have been about fourteen or fifteen…’ She pretended to think about it, but she could remember exactly what he’d been doing—or at least who he’d been doing it with—the year she was eight.

  She’d seen him from the back of her mother’s car that day. She’d been dressed up for her tea party in a pink frilly nightmare of a dress and as they’d driven through the village she’d seen him standing at the bus stop with his arm around a girl in a skirt so short that her legs had looked ten yards long.

  Her mother had kept her eyes on the road, but there had been a distinct ‘tut’ as they’d passed.

  She, on the other hand, had been green with envy, turning round in her seat to stare until her mother had spotted her in the mirror and told her to sit up straight before she creased her dress.

  ‘That,’ she said, ‘if I’m not mistaken, was the year you were going out with the incredibly, um, precocious Lily Parker.’

  ‘Was it?’ His eyes creased into a smile that warned her she’d said too much, remembered too well, betrayed an interest she would have denied with her last breath. ‘Possibly, although I can’t imagine that even Lily, with her undoubtedly precocious assets, lasted an entire year.’

  ‘So many girls, so little time,’ she said, as he held the door and then as she hesitated at the high step up, placed his hand on her bottom and boosted her up into the front seat. For a moment their eyes locked. It was like descending on a roller coaster. That sensation of falling, leaving your stomach behind…

  Working with Hal North Rule Number Three: Don’t make eye contact.

  ‘I was desperately envious of her red-leather skirt,’ she said, just so that he’d know that it was Lily she’d noticed, rather than him. ‘I always swore I’d have one exactly like it when I was fourteen.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Oh, please! Do you think my mother would have allowed me out of the house wearing something like that?’

  ‘A clever girl like you would have found a way. Did you never climb out of your bedroom window?’

  ‘Is that what Lily did?’

  ‘That would be telling.’

  In other words, yes, but by the time she was old enough there had been no one to be bad with. Make that no one she’d wanted to be bad with.

  She shook her head. ‘I had too much homework to spend my nights hanging around in Maybridge,’ she said, turning away to pull down her seat belt. ‘Okay, sweetheart?’ she asked, twisting in her seat to smile at Ally as he shut the door and walked around to take the seat beside her.

  Ally nodded but she was sitting very still, clearly anxious not to do anything to make this unexpected treat go away. She was really missing Savannah, but refused to talk about it.

  ‘Okay?’ he asked, when she’d called Penny.

  ‘Fine.’

  Not fine. He’d offered Penny a full-time job and she’d turned it down because she needed someone to look after Ally. She paid her, but not as much as Hal, who had apparently put all the estate staff on the same pay scale, and with the same benefits, as his HALGO staff. She couldn’t match that kind of hourly rate.

  ‘I’ll talk to her about working full-time when I see her,’ she said. ‘So, what’s wrong with your ceilings?’

  ‘My ceilings?’ He shrugged. ‘A combination of old age,’ he said, looking over his shoulder to check the traffic before pulling out, ‘and a leaking roof.’

  ‘Ouch. That sounds expensive.’

  ‘It will be. You might be better occupied devoting your front page to the scourge of thieves who are stripping lead from the roofs of churches and listed buildings.’

  ‘If you’d talked to me about it, I would have done.’ She lifted her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, no. That’s not possible. You don’t talk to the press.’

  ‘I’m talking to you.’

  ‘Too late. I’m off the news desk.’ She shrugged. ‘Actually, with several million to spend on property I think I’d have chosen something rather less of a liability than Cranbrook Park.’

  ‘Would you? And here was me thinking that you were in love with the place. All those Christmas parties in the great hall, picnics, gymkhanas courtesy of Sir Robert.’

  ‘You can mock, but it’s been the backdrop to my life since I was four years old,’ she told him. ‘It’s a big part of local history and every stone is full of stories. That doesn’t mean I’d want to be responsible for it. Or live in it.’

  ‘I was born in Cranbrook,’ he reminded her, ‘which gives me a good few years on you, but you’re in excellent company. My accountant would endorse
the former sentiment and my PA would definitely agree with the latter.’

  ‘Miss Webb doesn’t enjoy country life? Or is that Mrs Webb?’ she asked.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Not to me. Presumably it does to her.’

  ‘She’s Mrs Webb. Divorced but—’

  ‘There’s a lot of it about,’ she said, not wanting to know about her ‘buts.’

  ‘Her problem isn’t with country life, it’s to do with country plumbing.’

  ‘Wimp,’ she murmured.

  ‘I wouldn’t let her catch you saying that,’ he replied. There was nothing wrong with his hearing. Nothing wrong with any bit of him…

  She was the problem. She had the wrong name.

  She glanced back at Ally, but she was too busy looking out of the window to be interested in them.

  ‘So?’ She kept her voice light as she asked the big question. ‘Why did you buy Cranbrook Park?’

  They were paused at the traffic lights and he looked at her. ‘Because I could?’ he offered.

  And then he smiled.

  It was nothing spectacular as smiles went, no more than the tiniest contraction of lines fanning out from indigo eyes but the effect was like sticking wet fingers into a live socket and the fizz went all the way down to her toes.

  ‘It’s about power, then,’ Claire said, doing her best to ignore the tingle. Was there anything more galling than getting that kind of a sexual buzz from a man you didn’t want to fancy? That it would be crazy to fancy?

  Working with Hal North Rule Number Four: Don’t say anything that will make him smile.

  ‘No, it’s about a promise I made the day I left Cranbrook,’ he replied. Clearly the memory was not a good one because he abruptly lost the smile and the tingle was reduced to something more like the aftermath of pins and needles.

  It wasn’t over, but you could breathe again.

  ‘Really?’ she said, working to keep it that way. ‘Did you swear to return rich as Croesus and buy out the wicked baron?’