Buch lesen: «Instant Fire»

Table of Contents

Cover

Excerpt

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

THERE was an urgency about the ring and Joanna groaned. It was the first Saturday she hadn’t worked in weeks and she had planned a lazy morning. She pulled on her dressing-gown. ‘I’m coming,’ she called, as there was a second peremptory burst on the bell.

The postman grinned as she opened the door. ‘Sorry. Miss Grant, but this one needs signing for.’ Jo took the recorded delivery letter and signed where the postman indicated. ‘Thanks. You can go back to bed now.’ She glared at his back, then turned the letter over. The envelope was thick. Nothing cheap about whoever sent the letter inside, she thought. She opened it and unfolded the single sheet. She read it quickly through and frowned. It was from a firm of solicitors offering to purchase, at a very good price indeed, a block of shares she had inherited from her father.

She read it through a second time. The purchaser was not named. ‘A gentleman has instructed us …’ that was all. Jo shrugged and threw the letter on to her desk to answer later. It didn’t matter who the ‘gentleman’ was. Her shares in Redmond Construction were not for sale.

‘You, lad!’

Jo flung a contemptuous glance over the scaffolding. Another short-sighted idiot who assumed that because she was on a construction site she must be male. Nevertheless she inspected the figure standing in the yard with interest. He was leaning against a gunmetal-grey Aston Martin and despite the foreshortened angle she could see that he was well above average height. In fact, she thought, dressed in a beautifully cut lightweight tweed suit, he was an altogether impressive figure, and gave the disturbing impression that he wasn’t short of anything.

‘What do you want?’ she called down.

He raised a hand to shade his eyes against a sudden shaft of sunlight breaking through the clouds.

‘I’m looking for Joe Grant. Is he up there?’ he called.

‘I’ll come down,’ she shouted, swinging herself on to the first of a series of ladders to descend the fifty-odd feet to the ground and then turning to face the stranger. She had been right about his height. Despite owning to five feet ten inches in stockings she was forced to look up into the lean, weather-beaten face of a man whose very presence commanded attention. And into remarkable blue eyes which contrasted vividly with a pelt of black curly hair that no amount of the most expert cutting would ever quite keep under control. Blue eyes that were regarding her with puzzlement, as if he knew something wasn’t right, but couldn’t quite put his finger on what was bothering him.

The sudden rise in her pulse-rate at the sight of this tanned stranger, the heat that seared her cheekbones and parted her lips, an immediate recognition of some deep primeval need that he had stirred, shook her easy assurance.

She clamped her lips together. ‘Well?’ she demanded and her voice was shockingly sharp in her ears.

A slight frown creased his forehead. ‘My name is Thackeray,’ he said, his soft voice seeming to vibrate into her very bones. ‘I’m looking for Joe Grant. A girl at the office told me he was working here.’

Jo stuck her hands deep in her pockets in an unconsciously boyish gesture and walked quickly away from him. ‘You’d better come over to the site office, Mr Thackeray,’ she looked back over her shoulder and called to him.

‘I’ve been to the office already. He’s not there.’ He seemed reluctant to follow her.

‘He will be.’ Jo opened the door and waited. The man shrugged and moved after her and she went inside, removing her hard hat, enjoying the small triumph of satisfaction at the exclamation from behind her as a thick mop of dark blonde hair swung free to frame her face. She shrugged out of the ancient Barbour, several sizes too large, and turned to face him. ‘I’m Jo Grant, Mr Thackeray. Now, what exactly can I do for you?’

A smile charged his eyes with warmth as he acknowledged his mistake. ‘I can think of any number of things. Accept my most humble apologies, perhaps?’

‘Perhaps,’ she conceded, cloaking her heart’s racketing response to his smile in cool politeness. This man had never been humble.

‘Does it happen often?’

‘Often enough. There’s no reason for you to feel stupid.’

‘Oh, I don’t,’ he said, easily. ‘Dressed in an outsized jacket, wellingtons and a hard hat, even the most glamorous woman might be mistaken for a boy.’

His amusement was galling. And she hadn’t missed the implication that since she wasn’t glamorous it was perfectly reasonable for him to make such a mistake.

‘Perhaps you would get to the point, Mr Thackeray?’

‘The point, Miss Grant?’

‘You were looking for me. You’ve found me.’

‘Oh, the point!’ The smile died on his lips and his expression became quite still. ‘The point is this, Jo Grant. I came to ask the bearer of that name out to lunch. So? What do you say?’

Jo drew her brows together in genuine surprise. ‘Lunch? Why on earth would you want to take me out to lunch.’

He looked at her more intently. ‘You would find such an invitation surprising?’ he asked. There was a certain practised charm about him and she realised, with a slight shock, that he was flirting with her.

‘Of course I’m surprised. You don’t know me.’

‘True,’ he conceded. ‘And I have to own up to the fact that the Joe Grant I’m looking for weighs around fifteen stone, has a beard and is in his fifties. But I am very happy to accept you as his substitute.’

Jo sat down rather suddenly. ‘No substitute at all, I’m afraid. But I’m the nearest you’re going to get. My father is dead.’

‘Joe’s dead?’ There was no disguising the shock in his voice. ‘But he was no age.’ He seemed genuinely upset and for a moment stared through the window. Then he looked down at her as if seeing her for the first time. ‘You’re Joe’s daughter? The one in the picture on his desk?’ He frowned. ‘But you were all spectacles and braces.’

Jo remembered the dreadful picture in an old frame that had been almost buried among the clutter on her father’s desk. ‘Yes, I’m afraid I was. Poor Dad. I usually managed to avoid having my photograph taken, but that was a school job. There was no escape. Mum felt obliged to buy it but out of deference to my feelings she wouldn’t put it next to my sister’s.’

‘Really? Why was that?’

‘Heather has curls, straight teeth and twenty-twenty vision.’ She shrugged. ‘Dad took pity on me.’

Measuring blue eyes regarded her with provoking self-assurance. ‘I’m certain you’d give your sister a run for her money these days, Miss Grant.’

She smiled slightly. ‘I’m afraid not, Mr Thackeray. Heather is still the family beauty. I had to make do with the brains.’

‘Poor you.’

Jo stiffened. ‘I don’t require sympathy, Mr Thackeray,’ she blurted out, then coloured furiously at her stupid outburst as she saw the laughter lighting the depths of his eyes. This man was getting under her skin, breaking through the barriers she had erected as part of the price for her acceptance in a man’s world.

‘Your self-esteem still seems in need of a little propping up, if you don’t mind my saying so. But I have to agree that you have no need of sympathy from me, or anyone else.’ Before she could reply he had changed the subject. ‘Joe said you planned to follow in his footsteps. I thought he was joking.’

‘So did he, Mr Thackeray. By the time he realised his mistake it was too late to do anything about it.’

‘Did he try?’

She remembered the pride on his face at her graduation, her mother’s delight. ‘Not very hard,’ she assured him.

His look was thoughtful. ‘I see.’

She had assumed he would take his leave once he had discovered that his errand was fruitless. Instead he folded himself into the chair at the side of her desk.

‘I’m very sorry to hear about Joe’s death, Miss Grant. What happened?’ There was a genuine concern in his face which brought the old familiar ache to her throat. She stared hard at the schedules on the desk in front of her until the dangerous prickling behind her eyelids was under control.

‘He was in his car. Apparently he had a heart attack.’ Jo dragged her mind back to the present and looked up. ‘It was three years ago.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’ve been overseas, working in Canada. I’ve been renewing some old acquaintances and when I phoned Redmonds’ office to ask for your father they said—’

‘It’s all right. A simple mistake. It happens all the time; I should have learned to be less prickly by now.’ She offered him her hand and a slightly rueful smile. ‘Joanna Grant.’

His grasp was warm, the strong hand of a man you would want on your side. ‘Clayton Thackeray.’

‘Well, I’m sorry you had a wasted journey, Mr Thackeray.’

‘Hardly wasted.’ His eyes were intensely, disturbingly blue, and she looked hurriedly away.

‘I’m not much of a substitute for Dad.’

‘I liked and admired your father, Joanna. But it occurs to me that lunch with you will be every bit as enjoyable. And you’re a great deal easier on the eye. Now that you’ve dispensed with the braces.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she protested. ‘You don’t have to take me …’ He waited, his face betraying nothing. ‘I shouldn’t …’

‘Why not?’ he asked.

‘Because …’ There was no reason, apart from the fact that she wanted to go far too much for her own peace of mind.

He smiled as if he could see the battle taking place inside her head. ‘Force yourself, Joanna.’

‘I …’ He still had her hand firmly clasped in his much larger one. ‘Thank you.’ She found herself agreeing, without quite understanding why. Except that she didn’t think he was the kind of man who ever took no for an answer.

‘My pleasure. I booked a table at the George on my way through the village. I’d planned to take your father there.’

‘Did you? Then I’d better change my boots.’ She put her head to one side and decided it was her turn to tease a little. ‘But you don’t have to impress me, Mr Thackeray. I’m just a site engineer. I usually have a sandwich down the pub.’

Laughter produced deep creases around his eyes and down his cheeks. ‘I’m not looking for a job, Joanna. And my friends call me Clay. Do what you have to. I’ll wait in the car.’

She kicked off her boots, slipped her feet into narrow low-heeled shoes and ran a clothes brush over her grey woollen trousers, wishing for once that she had a skirt to change into. Her soft cream shirt had been chosen more for comfort than style, but at least her sweater was a pretty, if impractical, mixture of pink and white. A gift from her Heather, her older sister, who ran a stylish boutique and never ceased in her attempts to add a little femininity to Jo’s wardrobe which tended to run to hardwearing clothes suitable for the site. She took down the calendar that hid the mirror, her one concession to vanity in this male world, and regarded her reflection with disfavour.

Then she shrugged. ‘Don’t kid yourself, Jo,’ she told herself sternly. ‘He’s taking you out to lunch because he knew your father. Don’t get any silly ideas.’ She pulled a face at herself, but nevertheless Heather would have been pleased to see how long her little sister spent on her hair and make-up.

Clay Thackeray ushered her into the car, opening the door and settling her comfortably before sliding into the driving seat. She was aware of interested eyes watching from every part of the site and knew that she would be teased mercilessly for the next few days by men opening doors with exaggerated politeness, offering her their arm on the scaffolding. They wouldn’t miss a trick.

‘It would be just the same if you were a man being picked up by a girl, you know. Probably worse.’ He reversed the car and turned into the lane.

She laughed. ‘Do you read minds for a living?’

‘No, but I was a site engineer myself once.’

‘Were you?’ Jo gave him a sideways glance from under long, dark lashes. He’d come a long way from that lowly position. ‘And I have no doubt that a great many girls picked you up.’

He turned and smiled. ‘A few,’ he admitted. ‘And your father certainly knew how to tease.’

‘Yes, he did.’ She had worked on sites with him during the long summer holidays from university and she had seen him at work. Had been the butt of his jokes, too. The slightest mistake was ruthlessly exploited. She had hated it, but it had toughened her up. The Aston purred as he drove gently down the lane. ‘This is a lovely car.’

‘Yes, it was my father’s. He hasn’t driven it much in recent years but he wouldn’t let me buy it from him until he considered I was old enough to be trusted with it.’

‘And are you?’

‘Thirty-three?’ he offered. ‘What do you think? The old man wanted to wait another year. He didn’t have his first Aston until he was nearly thirty-five. But I forced his hand. I threatened to buy a BMW.’ He turned into the George’s car park.

‘What a dreadful thing to do!’ But the laughter in her voice softened the words.

‘Wasn’t it?’ Their hands touched as he reached to unclip her seatbelt and they looked up at the same moment. For a long second Jo thought the world must have stopped spinning. ‘I want to kiss you, Jo Grant.’ His voice grated over a million tiny nerve-endings and she swallowed. Her pulse was hammering in her ears and she could hardly breathe. Girls weren’t supposed to kiss men they had just met. They certainly weren’t supposed to admit they wanted to.

Jo fought the inclination to meet him halfway and lifted one brow. ‘And do you always get what you want, Clayton Thackeray?’

‘Always,’ he assured her.

Flustered by the unwavering certainty in his eyes, she made an effort at a laugh. ‘Really, Mr Thackeray, I thought the form was that you wine and dine a girl before you make a pass,’ she said, attempting to hide her bewildering, unexpected hunger for this man, bury it under a flippancy she was far from feeling.

Clay Thackeray stared at her for a moment, then he released the seatbelt, making her jump, breaking the spell. ‘You’re right, of course. And this is only lunch. I’ll have to give some thought to the question of dinner.’

Before she could gather her wits he was opening the car door for her. His hand under her arm seemed to burn through the sleeve of her jacket and neither of them spoke as he led her inside the restaurant. Clay caught the eye of the waiter and they were shown straight to their table in the corner, overlooking the river.

Jo kept her eyes firmly on the view from the window, anything but face the man opposite. She spent her working life with men and they rarely managed to find her at a loss for a word. But right now she couldn’t think of a thing to say. At least nothing that made any sense.

No such problem tormented Clay. ‘Let me see if I can read your thoughts again,’ he suggested. Jo’s grey eyes widened. The disturbing thoughts racing unbidden through her mind were not the kind she wanted him to read. ‘Duck?’ he said softly, a suspicion of laughter in his voice.

‘Is that an instruction or an observation?’ she asked, making a supreme effort to keep the atmosphere light.

‘An observation,’ he replied, drily, pointing to the birds on the riverbank. ‘You seem to be fascinated by them; I thought perhaps you were deciding which one you wanted for lunch.’ He offered her the menu. ‘Or perhaps you’d rather run an eye over this?’

Jo buried her face in the menu and by the time the waiter returned to take their order had regained something of her natural composure.

‘Something to drink?’

‘A pineapple juice topped up with soda, please.’

Clay relayed this request to the waiter and added a mineral water for himself.

‘You said you have just come back from Canada?’ Jo asked, leading the conversation into neutral territory. ‘What were you doing there?’

‘Working. My mother was a French Canadian. When she died I realised how little I knew about her or where she came from. I wanted to find out.’

‘And now you’re having a holiday?’

He hesitated for a moment before he said, ‘Not exactly. But I’m looking up old friends. When the receptionist at Redmonds said Joe was working here it was close enough to home to take a chance on finding him at the site.’

‘Home?’ She tried to ignore the treacherous rise in her pulse-rate at the thought of him living near by.

‘I bought a cottage on the river at Camley when I was over at Christmas.’

He was staying, and she was ridiculously, stupidly pleased. ‘I love Camley. It’s so unspoilt.’ She was babbling, but he seemed not to notice.

‘Yes. It’s the reason I bought the place.’ He pulled a face. ‘Stupid, really. My offices are in London; a service flat would be a lot less bother. But I couldn’t resist the cottage. It’s old and it needs a lot of work, but I suppose that was part of its charm. The builder has finished putting the structure to rights and it’s habitable, but I’m just camping there at the moment.’

‘So you’re not going back to Canada?’

‘Not permanently. At least for the foreseeable future.’ He regarded her with steady amusement. ‘Are you pleased?’ he asked.

The arrival of the waiter saved her from the embarrassment of a reply and she regarded the poached salmon he placed before her with a sudden loathing for its pinkness … the same colour that she was only too aware was staining her cheeks.

‘Hollandaise?’ Forced to look up, she discovered that he wasn’t laughing at her as she had suspected. His smile was unexpectedly warm. ‘I am,’ he said. ‘Very pleased.’

She swallowed and took the dish he offered. ‘Did you work with Dad for long?’ she asked, the catch in her voice barely noticeable.

‘He was my first project manager. I came to Redmonds from university and was put to work under him. I was very fortunate. You must miss him.’

‘Yes, I miss him. I wanted him to …’ Her voice trailed away. That was too private a need to be shared. Not something to be spoken aloud.

Sensitive to the fact that he had strayed into dangerous territory, he changed the subject, describing his life in Canada, the country. On safer ground, Jo at last began to relax.

When coffee arrived he sat back in his chair and regarded her seriously. ‘So what are your career plans, Joanna? Surely you don’t intend to stay on site?’

‘I was the first woman that Redmonds employed as a site engineer,’ she said, with a certain pride. ‘I plan to be the first woman they appoint as a project manager.’

If he was surprised he hid it well enough, but his next question suggested that he had some understanding of the problems involved. ‘Does that leave you any room for a personal life?’

‘Not much,’ she admitted.

‘But what about marriage? Raising a family?’

‘Men manage to have both.’ She was no stranger to this argument. Her sister had tried so many times to persuade her to take up a more conventional career that she had once offered to make a tape recording and play it at least once a day to save her the bother. But Heather had long since stopped trying to change her and confined her efforts these days to improving her wardrobe.

‘True, and probably not very fair. But men don’t get pregnant. Climbing up and down ladders might get to be a bit of a problem, don’t you think?’

Since Jo had no intention of getting pregnant in the foreseeable future, she ignored the question and glanced at her watch. ‘It’s late. I should get back.’

Clay regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, but didn’t pursue the subject. Instead he summoned the waiter and asked for the bill. ‘Now, about dinner. Where shall I pick you up?

Surprise that he should want to see her again made her laugh a little uncertainly. ‘There’s no need, Clay, really. It was very kind of you to take me out to lunch, but—’

‘I didn’t bring you here to be kind.’ He leaned forward. ‘I still want to kiss you, Jo Grant. You were the one who stipulated being wined and dined first. Of course, perhaps you’ve changed your mind.’ His eyes glinted wickedly. ‘In which case I’ll be happy to oblige right now.’

‘I didn’t …’ Joanna bit back the denial and stood up. It was a ridiculous conversation and she had no intention of prolonging it. Clay rose and she smiled, graciously, she hoped. ‘Please don’t let me rush you.’ She offered Clay her hand and he shook it solemnly. ‘Thank you for lunch. I won’t trouble you for a lift. I can get a taxi back to work.’ She moved swiftly across the dining-room, making for the pay-phone in Reception, where she searched furiously in her bag.

‘Can I offer you some change?’ He was leaning against the wall, watching her.

‘No, thank you,’ Jo said coldly. Then, as she realised that she had none, she changed her mind. ‘Yes,’ she snapped.

‘It’ll be at least ten minutes before one comes,’ Clay said, gently, offering her a handful of silver coins. ‘Why don’t you want me to take you?’

She refused to meet his eye. Selecting a ten-pence coin, Jo fiercely punched in the number of the local taxi service listed by the phone.

‘Don’t you want me to kiss you?’ he asked, seriously. ‘I rather thought you did.’

The phone was ringing in her ear. ‘Keble Taxis, how can I help you?’

‘I should like a taxi to collect me from the George as quickly as possible, please,’ Jo said, studiously ignoring the man at her side.

‘We’re rather busy at the moment,’ the girl told her. ‘It’ll be twenty minutes.’

‘Twenty minutes!’

Clay took the phone from her hand and spoke into the receiver. ‘We’ll leave it, thank you.’ He hung up. ‘I can’t have you late for work, can I? Not a dedicated career-woman like you. You’ll be quite safe, I promise.’

Before she could protest further he had opened the door and swept her towards the car. Settled against the worn leather, Jo was aware of a certain breathlessness. On site, except for visits from the project manager, she was in control. But she had somehow lost that control when Clay Thackeray had walked into her office. The word safe was completely inappropriate. He was a dangerously disturbing man.

They didn’t speak as they sped along the country lanes and it was with a certain relief that Jo saw the site earthworks appear above the hedge. Clay pulled into the yard and stopped. She tried to escape but he was faster, catching her hand as she moved to release the seatbelt, holding it against his chest so that she could feel the steady thudding of his heart.

‘Now you have to decide, Jo Grant.’

Jo glared at him. ‘You promised!’

‘Did I?’ He challenged her softly. ‘I remember saying that you would be safe. I didn’t specify what I would keep you safe from.’

How could such open, honest eyes hide such a devious nature? she fumed. ‘In that case I’ll get it over with now, if it’s all the same to you.’ Ignoring the fact that they had the rapt attention of the site staff, she closed her eyes and waited. A soft chuckle made her open them again. Clay was shaking his head.

‘Round one to you, ma’am. On points.’ He leaned across and pushed open the door for her. For a moment she sat, completely nonplussed. ‘Well? Are you going to sit there all afternoon? I thought you were in a hurry.’

‘Yes.’ She made an effort to pull herself together. ‘Thank you again for lunch,’ she said, auto-matically.

She climbed from the car and walked quickly across to her office, firmly refusing to give in to the impulse to look back.

It was Thursday before he phoned. A whole week.

‘Joanna?’ Her heart skipped a beat as the low voice spoke her name.

‘Clay?’ she echoed the query in his voice, but ruefully acknowledged that the man knew how to play the game. She had been on tenterhooks all week, expecting him to turn up at the site every moment. The mere glimpse of a grey car was enough to send her heart on a roller-coaster. But he hadn’t come and she had called herself every kind of fool for refusing his invitation to dinner. And then called herself every kind of fool for wanting to get involved with him. He was completely out of her reach. She hadn’t the experience to cope with such a man. She hadn’t the experience, full stop.

‘How are you, Joanna?’ She could almost see the cool amusement in those eyes.

‘Fine, thank you. And you? Are you enjoying your holiday?’

‘Not much. I’ve been in the Midlands all week on business. But you could change all that. Have dinner with me tonight.’

‘Have all your old girlfriends got married while you’ve been away?’ she parried, a little breathlessly, not wishing to seem too eager.

He chuckled. ‘Most of them. It has been nearly seven years. Will you come?’

‘I …’ For a moment there was war between desire and common sense. Desire had no competition. ‘I’d love to.’