The Most Scandalous Ravensdale. Melanie Milburne

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СКАЧАТЬ giving a weird-sounding miaow. Every hair on Kat’s scalp fizzed at the roots. Every knob of her spine froze. She knew what that was. That was a victory miaow. The sort of miaow a cat makes when it lands its prey and was about to show it off to its owners.

      But Kat wasn’t his owner. She didn’t want to see his handiwork. No way. This was why she didn’t own a cat. This was why she didn’t even like cats. They brought in stuff, horrible stuff, like dead birds and...and...she couldn’t even think the word without wanting to jump on a chair and scream. Dread as cold as the snow falling outside chugged through her veins. A hedgehog climbed up her windpipe until she couldn’t take a breath. Fear tightened her chest, making her heart go into arrhythmia so bad any decent cardiologist would have rushed for a defibrillator.

      Her eyes were glued to the door of the sitting room. It was like a scene in a Friday night fright film. She was frozen with primal fear, unable to move a step forward or a step back. Her feet were nailed to the floor. Monty made that muffled miaow again from just outside the sitting room, the miaow that sounded like he had his mouth full of...something.

      No. No. No. Kat chanted manically. This couldn’t be happening. Not to her. Not on her first night in this lovely house. Lovely houses like this didn’t have dreadful, ghastly, horrid, unmentionable creatures inside them...

      It was so quiet she could hear each soft pad of Monty’s paws on the carpet as he came round the door into the sitting room. Puft. Puft. Puft. Puft. Her eyes widened in horror when she saw what was dangling from his mouth. ‘Eeeeeek!’ She screamed so loudly she was vaguely aware she might shatter the chandeliers or windows. Or wake the neighbours. In France.

      But then the stupid cat let the thing go. And it wasn’t dead! It streaked across the floor right next to Kat’s feet and disappeared under one of the sofas.

      Kat bolted from the room so fast she could have qualified for the Olympics. She snapped the door shut behind her and fled to the front door, barely stopping long enough to grab her coat from the coat stand. She didn’t bother with gloves—she would never have been able to get them on her shaking hands. She had only taken one flying step out of the Carstairses’ house when she came face to face with Flynn, who was walking a weird-looking dog.

      He frowned and steadied her with a hand on her arm. ‘Are you all right? I heard you screaming and—’

      Kat pointed back at the house with a quaking finger. ‘In—in there... M-Monty brought in a...a...’

      ‘A what?’

      ‘I can’t say it,’ she said. ‘Please will you get rid of it for me? Please? I’ll never be able to sleep knowing it’s in there.’

      ‘What’s in there?’

      Kat absolutely never cried. Not unless it was written in the script. Then she could do it, no problem. But fear colliding with relief that someone had come to her rescue made her want to throw herself on Flynn’s chest and howl like a febrile teething baby. She bit her bottom lip, sure she was going to bite right through before she could stop it trembling. ‘I—I have this thing...a phobia... I know it’s silly but I—I just can’t help it.’

      He put his gloved hand on her shoulder. Even though there were layers of fabric between his skin and hers, she felt something warm and electric go right through her body from the top of her shoulder to the balls of her feet. ‘Did Monty bring in a mouse?’

      Kat squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands over her ears. ‘Don’t say that word!’

      His hand slipped down from her shoulder to take her bare hands in his gloved ones. ‘Look at me, Kat.’

      Kat looked. But he wasn’t laughing at her. His expression was serious and concerned. ‘It got away from Monty,’ she said, almost wailing like a little kid. Waa-waa-waa. ‘It—it went under the sofa.’

      He gave her freezing hands a warm squeeze. ‘I’ll deal with it, or at least Cricket and I will.’

      ‘Cricket?’

      The little dog at Flynn’s feet yapped and spun around on his back legs as if on cue. He was not the sort of dog she was expecting someone like Flynn to own. She had expected some classy, Crufts-standard, purebred Malamute, a regal Great Dane or a velvet-smooth German pointer. Cricket wasn’t any bigger than a child’s football, was of indeterminate breed and looked like something out of a science fiction movie. His wiry coat was a caramel brown with little flecks of white that stood up at odd angles like they had been stuck on as an afterthought. He had one ear that stood up and one that flopped down, a thin, wiry tail that curled like a question mark over his back and a lower jaw that stuck out a few millimetres like a drawer that hadn’t been shut properly.

      ‘My right-hand man,’ Flynn said. ‘An expert at rodent-ectomies.’

      Kat was almost limp with relief. ‘I’d be ever so grateful.’

      ‘Do you want to wait at my house while we get the business end of things sorted?’

      Another groundswell of relief nearly knocked her off her feet, as if all her bones had been taken out of her body. ‘You wouldn’t mind?’

      He smiled and looped her arm through one of his. ‘Come this way.’

      Kat was beyond worrying about going all damsel-in-distress with him. She was in distress. She would have happily sat in an axe murderer’s house rather than face that...that creature under the sofa.

      Besides, it was a perfect opportunity to have a look around Flynn’s house while he wasn’t there.

      He unlocked the door and led her inside, telling her to make herself comfortable and that he’d be back soon. Cricket bounced at Flynn’s feet as if he knew he was in for some blood sport. Eeeww.

      Once they were gone Kat had a peep around. It was much the same layout as the Carstairses’ house next door but, while the Carstairses’ was a family home with loads of photos and family memorabilia, there was nothing to show Flynn’s family of origin. There wasn’t a single photo anywhere. There were some quite lovely works of art, however. And some rather gorgeous pieces of antique furniture that suggested he was a bit of a traditionalist, rather than a man with strictly modern taste.

      Kat found his study next door to the sitting room, which had a beautiful cedar desk and leather Chesterfield chair. There was a black Chesterfield sofa set in front of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The titles went from thick law tomes to the classics and history, with a smattering of modern titles, mostly crime and thrillers.

      She went back into the sitting room and sat down at the grand piano that was set to one side of the room near the windows. She put her fingers to the keys, but all she could tinkle out was a nursery rhyme or two—but not Three Blind Unmentionables. Not exactly Royal Albert Hall standard, she thought with an embittered pang at what she could have had if her father had provided for her during her childhood. No doubt the Ravensdale siblings were all accomplished musicians. They had gone to fabulous schools and been taken on wonderful holidays with no expense spared.

      What had she had?

      A big, fat nothing. Which was why it was so hard to get established now. She was years behind her peers. She hadn’t had acting lessons until recently because she couldn’t afford them. She still couldn’t afford a voice coach. A Scottish accent was fine if that was what a play called for. But she needed to be versatile, and that came with training, and training was hideously expensive—at СКАЧАТЬ