Buch lesen: «For His Eyes Only»

ONE

‘What’s got Miles’s knickers in a twist?’ Natasha Gordon poured herself half a cup of coffee. Her first appointment had been at eight and she’d been on the run ever since. She had to grab any opportunity to top up her caffeine level. ‘I was on my way to a viewing at the St John’s Wood flat when I got a message to drop everything and come straight back here.’

Janine, Morgan and Black’s receptionist and always the first with any rumour, lifted her slender cashmere-clad shoulders in a don’t-ask-me shrug. ‘If that’s what he said, you’d better not keep him waiting,’ she said, but, shrug notwithstanding, the ghost of an I-know-something-you-don’t smile tugged at lips on which the lipstick was always perfectly applied.

Tash abandoned the untouched coffee and headed for the stairs, taking them two at a time. Miles Morgan, senior partner of Morgan and Black, first port of call for the wealthy flooding into London from all corners of the world to snap up high-end real estate, had been dropping heavy hints for weeks that the vacant ‘associate’ position was hers.

Damn right. She’d worked her socks off for the last three years and had earned that position with hard work and long hours and Janine, who liked everyone to know how ‘in’ she was with the boss, had casually let slip the news on Friday afternoon that he would be spending the weekend in the country with the semi-retired ‘Black’ to discuss the future of the firm.

‘Down, pulse, down,’ she muttered, pausing outside his office to scoop up a wayward handful of hair and anchor it in place with great-grandma’s silver clip.

She always started out the day looking like a career woman on the up, but haring about London all morning had left her more than a little dishevelled and things had begun to unravel. Her hair, her make-up, her shirt.

She tucked in her shirt and was checking the top button when the door opened.

‘Janine! Is she here yet?’ Miles shouted before he realised she was standing in front him. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘I had a viewing at the Chelsea house first thing,’ she said, used to his short fuse. ‘They played it very close to their chests, but the wife’s eyes were lit up like the Blackpool illuminations. I guarantee they’ll make an offer before the end of the day.’

The prospect of a high five-figure commission would normally be enough to change his mood but he merely grunted and the sparkle of anticipation went flat. Whatever Janine had been smiling about, it wasn’t the prospect of the office party Miles would throw to celebrate the appointment of the new associate.

‘It’s been non-stop since then,’ she added, and it wasn’t going to ease up this side of six. ‘Is this urgent, Miles? I’m showing Glencora Jarrett the St John’s Wood apartment in half an hour and the traffic is solid.’

‘You can forget that. I’ve sent Toby.’

‘Toby?’ Her occasionally significant other had been on a rugby tour in Australia and wasn’t due home until the end of the month. She shook her head. It wasn’t important, but Lady Glen... ‘No, she specifically asked—’

‘For you. I know, but a viewing isn’t a social engagement,’ he cut in before she could remind him that Lady Glencora was desperately nervous and would not go into an unoccupied apartment with a male negotiator.

‘But—’

‘Forget Her Ladyship,’ he said, thrusting the latest edition of the Country Chronicle into her hands. ‘Take a look at this.’

The magazine was open at the full-page advertisement for Hadley Chase, a historic country house that had just come on the market.

‘Oh, that came out really well...’ A low mist, caught by the rising sun, had lent the house a golden, soft-focus enchantment that hid its many shortcomings. Well worth the effort of getting up at the crack of dawn and driving into the depths of Berkshire on the one day in the week that she could have had a lie-in. ‘The phone will be ringing off the hook,’ she said, offering it back to him.

‘Read on,’ he said, not taking it.

‘I know what it says, Miles. I wrote it.’ The once grand house was suffering from age and neglect and she’d focused on the beauty and convenience of the location to tempt potential buyers to come and take a look. ‘You approved it,’ she reminded him.

‘I didn’t approve this.’

She frowned. Irritable might be his default mode but, even for Miles, this seemed excessive. Had some ghastly mistake slipped past them both? It happened, but this was an expensive full-page colour ad, and she’d gone over the proof with a fine-tooth comb. Confident that nothing could have gone wrong, she read out her carefully composed copy.

‘“A substantial seventeenth-century manor house in a sought-after location on the Berkshire Downs within easy reach of motorway links to London, the Midlands and the West. That’s the good news. The bad news...”’ She faltered. Bad news? What the...?

‘Don’t stop now.’

The words were spoken with a clear, crisp, don’t-argue-with-me certainty, but not by her boss, and she spun around as the owner of the voice rose from the high-backed leather armchair set in front of Miles Morgan’s desk and turned to face her.

Her first impression was of darkness. Dark hair, dark clothes, dark eyes in a mesmerising face that missed beauty by a hair’s breadth, although a smile might have done the business.

The second was of strength. There was no bulk, but his shoulders were wide beneath a crumpled linen jacket so old that the black had faded to grey, his abdomen slate-flat under a T-shirt that hung loosely over narrow hips.

His hand was resting on the back of the chair, long calloused fingers curled over the leather. They were the kind of fingers that she could imagine doing unspeakable things to her. Was imagining...

She looked up and met eyes that seemed to penetrate every crevice, every pore, and a hot blush, beginning somewhere low in her belly, spread like wildfire in every direction—

‘Natasha!’

Miles’s sharp interjection jolted her back to the page but it was a moment before she could catch her breath, gather her wits and focus on the words dancing in front of her.

...the bad news is the wet rot, woodworm, crumbling plasterwork and leaking roof. The vendor would no doubt have preferred to demolish the house and redevelop the land, but it’s a Grade II listed building in the heart of the Green Belt so he’s stuffed. There is a fine oak Tudor staircase but, bearing in mind the earlier reference to wet rot and woodworm, an early viewing is advised if you want to see the upper floors.

Her heart still pounding with the shock of a sexual attraction so powerful that she was trembling, she had to read it twice before it sank in. And when it did her pulse was still in a sorry state.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. Then, realising how feeble that sounded, ‘How did this happen?’

‘How, indeed?’

Her question had been directed at Miles, but the response came from Mr Tall, Dark and Deadly. Who was he?

‘Hadley,’ he said, apparently reading her mind. Or maybe she’d asked the question out loud. She needed to get a grip. She needed an ice bath...

She cleared her throat. ‘Hadley?’ His name still emerged as if spoken by a surprised frog, but that wasn’t simply because all her blood had apparently drained from her brain to the more excitable parts of her anatomy. The house was unoccupied and the sale was being handled by the estate’s executors and, since no one had mentioned a real-life, flesh-and-blood Hadley, she’d assumed the line had run dry.

‘Darius Hadley,’ he elaborated, clearly picking up on her doubt.

In her career she’d worked with everyone, from young first-time buyers scraping together a deposit, to billionaires investing in London apartments and town houses costing millions. She knew that appearances could be deceptive but Darius Hadley did not have the look of a man whose family had been living in the Chase since the seventeenth century, when a grateful Charles II had given the estate to one James Hadley, a rich merchant who’d funded him in exile.

With the glint of a single gold earring amongst the mass of black curls tumbling over his collar, the crumpled linen jacket faded from black to grey, jeans worn threadbare at the knees, he looked more like a gypsy, or a pirate. Perhaps that was where the Hadley fortune had come from—plundering the Spanish Main with the likes of Drake. Or, with the legacy now in the hands of a man bearing the name of a Persian king, it was possible that his ancestors had chosen to travel east overland, to trade in silk and spices.

This man certainly had the arrogance to go with his name but, unlike his forebears, it seemed that he had no interest in settling down to live the life of a country gentleman. Not that she blamed him for that.

Hadley Chase, with roses growing over its timbered Tudor heart, might look romantic in the misty haze of an early summer sunrise, but it was going to take a lot of time and a very deep purse to bring it up to modern expectations in plumbing, heating and weatherproofing. There was nothing romantic about nineteen-fifties plumbing and, from the neglected state of both house and grounds, it was evident that the fortune needed to maintain it was long gone.

On the bright side, even in these cash-strapped days, there were any number of sheikhs, pop stars and Russian oligarchs looking for the privacy of a country estate no more than a helicopter hop from the centre of London and she was looking forward to adding the Chase to her portfolio of sales in the very near future. She had big plans for the commission.

Miles cleared his throat and she belatedly stuck out her hand.

‘Natasha Gordon. How d’you do, Mr Hadley?’

‘I’ve been stuffed, mounted and hung out to dry,’ he replied. ‘How do you think I feel?’ he demanded, ignoring her hand.

‘Angry.’ He had every right to be angry. Hell, she was furious with whoever had meddled with her carefully worded description and they would feel the wrath of her tongue when she found out who it was, but that would have to wait. Right now she had to get a grip of her hormones, be totally professional and reassure him that this wasn’t the disaster it appeared. ‘I don’t know what happened here, Mr Hadley, but I promise you it’s just a minor setback.’

‘A minor setback?’ Glittering eyes—forget charcoal, they were jet—skewered her to the floor and Tash felt the heat rise up her neck and flood her cheeks. She was blushing. He’d made her blush with just a look. That was outrageous... ‘A minor setback?’ he repeated, with the very slightest emphasis on ‘minor’.

His self-control was impressive.

Okaaay... She unpeeled her tongue from the roof of her mouth, snatched in a little oxygen to get her brain started and said, ‘Serious purchasers understand that there will be problems with this type of property, Mr Hadley.’

‘They expect to be able to view the upper floors without endangering their lives,’ he pointed out. He hadn’t raised his voice; he didn’t have to. He’d made his point with a quiet, razor-edged precision that made Miles’s full-blown irritation look like a toddler tantrum.

‘Natasha!’ Miles prompted, more sharply this time. ‘Have you got something to say to Mr Hadley?’

‘What?’ She dragged her gaze from the seductive curve of Darius Hadley’s lower lip and fixed it somewhere around his prominent Adam’s apple, which only sent her mind off on another, even more disturbing direction involving extremities.

Do not look at his feet!

‘Oh, um, yes...’ She’d tried desperately to get her brain in gear, recall the notes she’d made, as she stared at scuffed work boots, jeans smeared with what looked like dry grey mud and clinging to powerful thighs. He’d obviously dropped whatever he was doing and come straight to the office when he’d seen the ad. Did he work on a building site? ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘there’s more than one set of stairs so it isn’t a problem.’

‘And that’s your professional opinion?’

‘Not that I recall there being anything wrong with the main staircase that a thorough seeing to with a vacuum cleaner wouldn’t fix,’ she added hurriedly when Miles sounded as if he might be choking. Come on, Tash...this is what you do. ‘I did advise the solicitor handling the sale that they should get in a cleaning contractor to give the place a good bottoming.’

A muscle tightened in his jaw. ‘And what was their response to that?’

‘They said they’d get the caretaker to give it a once-over.’

Some property owners did nothing to help themselves, but this probably wasn’t the moment to say so.

‘So it’s just the woodworm, rot and missing lead flashing on the roof that a potential buyer has to worry about?’ Darius Hadley raised his dark brows a fraction of a millimetre and every cell in her body followed as if he’d jerked a string.

Amongst a jangle of mixed messages—her head urging her to take a step back, every other part of her wanting to reach out and touch—she just about managed to stand her ground.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘according to the paperwork, the woodworm was treated years ago.’ Something he would have known if he’d taken the slightest interest in the house he’d apparently inherited. ‘I think you’ll find that it’s the cobwebs that will have women running screaming—’

Behind Hadley’s back, Miles made a sharp mouth-zipped gesture. ‘Mr Hadley isn’t looking for excuses. What he’s waiting for,’ he said, ‘what he’s entitled to, is an explanation and an apology.’

She frowned. Surely Miles had already covered that ground? She assumed she’d been called in to discuss a plan of action.

‘Don’t bother; I’ve heard enough,’ Hadley said before she could get in a word. ‘You’ll be hearing from my lawyer, Morgan.’

‘Lawyer?’ What use was a lawyer going to be? ‘No, really—’

Darius Hadley cut off her protest with a look that froze her in mid-sentence and seemed to go on for an eternity. Lethal eyes, a nose bred for looking down, a mouth made for sin... Finally, satisfied that he’d silenced her, his eyes seemed to shimmer, soften, warm to smoky charcoal and then, as she took half a step towards him, he nodded at Miles and walked out of the office, leaving the room ringing with his presence. Leaving her weak to the bone.

She put out a hand to grasp the back of the chair he’d been sitting in. It was still warm from his touch and the heat seemed to travel up her arm and spread through her limbs, creating little sparks throughout her body, igniting all the erogenous zones she was familiar with and quite a few that were entirely new.

Phew. Double phewy-phew...

‘He’s a bit tense, isn’t he?’ she said shakily. A sleek, dark Dobermann to Toby’s big, soft Labrador puppy—to be approached with caution rather than a hug. But the rewards if you won his trust...

Forget it! A man like that wasn’t a keeper. All you could hope for was to catch his attention for a moment. But what a moment—

‘With good reason,’ Miles said, interrupting a chain of thought that was going nowhere. Dark, brooding types had never been even close to the top of her list of appealing male stereotypes. Far too high-maintenance. Rude dark, brooding types had never figured.

A barrage of hoots from the street below distracted her, but there was no escape there. Apparently oblivious to the traffic, Darius Hadley was crossing the street and several people stopped to watch him stride down the road in the direction of Sloane Square. Most of them were women.

It wasn’t just her, then.

Without warning he stopped, swung round and looked up at the window where she was standing as if he’d known she’d be there. And she forgot to breathe.

‘Natasha!’

She jumped, blinked and when she looked again he’d gone and for a moment she was afraid that he was coming back. Hoped that he was coming back, but a moment later he reappeared further along the street and she turned her back on the window before he felt her eyes boring into the back of his head and turned again to catch her looking.

‘Have you spoken to the Chronicle?’ she asked; anything to distract herself.

‘The first thing I did when Mr Hadley’s solicitor contacted me early this morning was to call the Chronicle’s advertising manager.’ Miles walked across to his desk and removed a sheet of paper from a file and handed it to her. ‘He sent this over from his office. Hadley hasn’t seen it yet but it’s only a matter of time before his lawyer contacts them.’

It was a photocopied proof of the ad for Hadley Chase—exactly as she’d read it out—complete with a tick next to the ‘approved’ box and her signature scrawled across the bottom.

‘No, Miles. This is wrong.’ She looked up. ‘This isn’t what I signed.’

‘But you did write that,’ he insisted.

‘One or two of the phrases sound vaguely familiar,’ she admitted.

She sometimes wrote a mock advertisement describing a property in the worst possible light when she thought it would help the vendor to see the property through the eyes of a potential buyer. The grubby carpet in the hall, the children’s finger marks on the doors, the tired kitchen. Stuff that wouldn’t cost much to fix, but would make all the difference to the prospects of a sale.

‘Oh, come on, Tash. It sounds exactly like one of your specials.’

‘My “specials” have the advantage of being accurate. And helpful.’

‘So you would have mentioned the leaking roof?’

‘Absolutely. Damaged ceilings and pools of water are about as off-putting as it gets,’ she said, hating that she was on the defensive when she hadn’t done anything wrong.

‘What about the stairs?’

‘I’m sure they’d be lovely if you could see them for the dust and dead leaves that blew in through a broken window.’ The house had been empty since the last occupant had been moved to a nursing home when Alzheimer’s had left him a danger to himself a couple of years ago. ‘The caretaker is worse than useless. I had to find some card and fill the gap myself but it’s just a temporary solution. The first serious gust of wind will blow it out. And, frankly, if I were Darius Hadley I’d put a boot up the backside of the estate executor because he’s no help.’ He didn’t reply. ‘Come on, Miles. You know I didn’t send this to the Chronicle.’

‘Are you sure about that? Really? We all know that you’ve been putting in long hours. What time was your first viewing this morning?’

‘Eight, but—’

‘What time did you finish last night?’ He didn’t wait for her to answer but consulted a printout of her diary, no doubt supplied by Janine. No wonder she’d been smiling. This was much more fun than an office party. Gossip city... ‘Your last viewing was at nine-thirty so you were home at what? Eleven? Eleven-thirty?’

It had been after midnight. Buyers couldn’t always fit into a tidy nine-till-five slot. Far from complaining about the extra hours she put in, that they all put in—with the exception of Toby, who never allowed anything to interfere with rugby training, took time off whenever he felt like it and got away with murder because his great-aunt was married to Peter Black—Miles expected it.

‘They flew from the States to view that apartment. I could hardly tell them that I finished at five-thirty,’ she pointed out. They’d come a long way and wanted to see every detail and she wasn’t about to rush them.

‘No one can keep up that pace for long without something suffering,’ he replied, not even bothering to ask if they were likely to make an offer. ‘It seems obvious to me that you attached the wrong document when you emailed your copy to the Chronicle.’

‘No—’

‘I blame myself.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve pushed you too hard. I should have seen it coming.’

Seen what coming?

‘I didn’t attach the wrong anything,’ she declared, fizzing with indignation, her pulse still racing but with anger now rather than anticipation. How dared anyone tamper with her carefully composed ad? ‘And even if I had made a mistake, don’t you think I’d have noticed it when the proof came back?’

‘If you’d actually had time to look at it.’

‘I made time,’ she declared. ‘I checked every word. And what the hell was the Chronicle thinking? Why didn’t someone on the advertising desk query it?’

‘They did.’ He glanced at the ad. ‘They called this office on the twentieth. Unsurprisingly, they made a note for their records.’

‘Okay, so which idiot did they speak to?’

He handed her the page so that she could see for herself. ‘An idiot by the name of Natasha Gordon.’

‘No!’

‘According to the advertising manager, you assured them that it was the latest trend, harking back fifty years to an estate agent famous for the outrageous honesty of his advertisements.’ His tone, all calm reason, raised the small hairs on the back of her neck. Irritable, she could handle. This was just plain scary. ‘Clearly, you were angry with the executors for not taking your advice.’

‘If they didn’t have the cash, they didn’t have the cash, although I imagine their fees are safely in the bank. Believe me, if I’d been aping the legendary Roy Brooks, I’d have made a far better job of it than this,’ she said, working hard to sound calm even while her pulse was going through the roof. ‘There was plenty to work with. No one from the Chronicle talked to me.’ Calm, cool, professional...

‘So what are you saying? That the advertising manager of the Chronicle is lying? Or that someone pretended to be you? Come on, Tash, who would do that?’ he asked. ‘What would anyone have to gain?’

She swallowed. Put like that, it did sound crazy.

‘You are right about one thing, though,’ he continued. ‘The phone has been ringing off the hook—’ her sigh of relief came seconds too soon ‘—but not with people desperate to view Hadley Chase. They are all gossip columnists and the editors of property pages wanting a comment.’

She frowned. ‘Already? The magazine has been on the shelves for less than two hours.’

‘You know what they say about bad news.’ He took the ad from her and tossed it onto his desk. ‘In this instance I imagine it was given a head start by someone working at the Chronicle tipping them off.’

‘I suppose. How did Darius Hadley hear about it?’

‘I imagine the estate executors received the same phone calls.’

She shook her head, letting the problem of how this had happened go for the moment and concentrating instead on how to fix it. ‘The one thing I do know is that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. I meant what I said to Mr Hadley. Handled right...’

‘For heaven’s sake, Tash, you’ve made both the firm and Mr Hadley into a laughing stock. There is no way to handle this “right”! He’s withdrawn the house from the market and, on top of the considerable expenses we’ve already incurred, we’re not only facing a hefty claim for damages from Hadley but irreparable damage to the Morgan and Black name.’

‘All of which will go away if we find a buyer quickly,’ she insisted, ‘and it’s going to be all over the weekend property pages.’

‘I’m glad you realise the extent of the problem.’

‘No...’ She’d run a Google search when Hadley Chase had been placed in their hands for sale. There was nothing like a little gossip, a bit of scandal to garner a few column inches in one of the weekend property supplements. Unfortunately, despite her speculation on the source of their wealth, the Hadleys had either been incredibly discreet or dull beyond imagining. She’d assumed the latter; if James Hadley had been an entertaining companion, his money would have earned him a lot more than a smallish estate in the country. He’d have been given a title and a place at Charles II’s court.

Darius Hadley had blown that theory right out of the water.

Forget his clothes. With his cavalier curls, his earring, the edge of something dangerous that clung to him like a shadow, he would have been right at home there. Her fingers twitched as she imagined what it would be like to run her fingers through those silky black curls, over his flat abs.

She curled them into her palms, shook off the image—this wasn’t about Darius Hadley; it was about his house.

‘Come on, Miles,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t buy this kind of publicity. The house is in a fabulous location and buyers with this kind of money aren’t going to be put off by problems you’ll find in any property of that age.’ Well, not much. ‘I’ll make some calls, talk to a few people.’ Apparently speaking to a brick wall, she threw up her hands. ‘Damn it, I’ll go down to Hadley Chase and take a broom to the place myself!’

‘You’ll do nothing, talk to no one,’ he snapped.

‘But if I can find a buyer quickly—’

‘Stop! Stop right there.’ Having shocked her into silence, he continued. ‘This is what is going to happen. I’ve booked you into the Fairview Clinic—’

‘The Fairview?’ A clinic famous for taking care of celebrities with drug and drink problems?

‘We’ll issue a statement saying that you’re suffering from stress and will be having a week or two of complete rest under medical supervision.’

‘No.’ Sickness, hospitals—she’d had her fill of them as a child and nothing would induce her to spend a minute in one without a very good reason.

‘The firm’s medical plan will cover it,’ he said, no doubt meaning to reassure her.

‘No, Miles.’

‘While you’re recovering,’ he continued, his voice hardening, ‘you can consider your future.’

‘Consider my future?’ Her future was stepping up to an associate’s office, not being hidden away like some soap star with an alcohol problem until the dust cleared. ‘You’ve got to be kidding, Miles. This has to be a practical joke that’s got out of hand. There’s a juvenile element in the front office that needs a firm—’

‘What I need,’ he said, each word given equal weight, ‘is for you to cooperate.’