The Business Arrangement. Natasha Oakley

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СКАЧАТЬ of him, then. He likes his women, but this isn’t in the usual run of things. I know I’m trying to make light of it, but she’d be giving me the creeps. It doesn’t matter what he says to her, she keeps coming on to him.’

      ‘But—’

      ‘There isn’t any “buts”. He needs someone to shield him until his PA gets back. It doesn’t seem too much to ask. You know Mum would have forced you out the door if she was still alive.’

      ‘It’s not fair to use Mum,’ she protested without much conviction, knowing her mother would have been among the first to volunteer the services of her daughter. She sighed and replaced her empty mug on the small table. ‘I suppose I’m just finding it difficult to believe Hugh can’t manage it all himself. I’ve watched him jettison women with a total disregard for their feelings since he turned about eighteen. Probably before that, but I was too young to notice.’

      ‘Sonya’s got the hide of a rhino. She’s not even deterred by Callie and she’s scary.’

      ‘The woman on the phone?’

      He nodded, pushing off his brogues with his toes and putting his socked feet up on the table. ‘Calantha Rainford-Smythe. Hugh’s latest. Money and connections oozing from every pore. Didn’t you meet her at Christmas?’

      It was difficult to forget a woman like Calantha. She was a tall streak of elegant blonde perfection who’d managed to see off any competition that evening by dint of clinging like a limpet. A typical Hugh appendage. ‘I think so,’ she said blandly, walking over to the piano. ‘Jewellery designer, isn’t she?’

      His brown eyes crinkled. ‘She likes to think so. In reality other people do the work and she puts her name to it.’

      ‘What does she say about all this Sonya business?’ she asked, drawing her finger along the dust on the piano lid.

      ‘You can ask her yourself unless she’s ringing to say she can’t make it. She’s supposed to be coming down.’

      ‘I didn’t know that,’ Amy said, looking up.

      ‘She was supposed to be in Brussels, but on balance Callie decided she couldn’t miss Henley Royal Regatta. A great opportunity to see and be seen. Her business depends on it,’ he said, mimicking her flat vowel sounds. ‘All that champagne and old money about the place. Not to mention the risk that Hugh might meet someone else.’

      Amy smiled. ‘You don’t like her, do you?’

      ‘Not my type. I don’t know what she thinks about Sonya, though. Hugh’s never said. You’ll have to ask him.’

      ‘About what?’ Hugh said, opening the sitting-room door.

      ‘Callie’s opinion of Sonya,’ Seb said, lifting his feet off the table to let him pass. ‘How did she know you were here?’

      ‘She’s just arrived at my mother’s,’ he said, sitting back down on the sofa. ‘I’ll finish my tea and head back. I need to pick up my blazer and tie and I think Jasper and Ben are meeting us there as well. I don’t know what time they planned on getting here.’

      ‘What does she say about Sonya?’

      There was a small beat before he answered. ‘Callie doesn’t know about Richard’s health problems or really understand my relationship with him. Her perspective on it is therefore…different,’ he said carefully.

      ‘Meaning?’

      Hugh’s glance flicked across at Seb before he continued blandly, ‘Meaning she thinks I should tell Richard what’s going on. If the marriage is doomed there’s no point prolonging it.’ He picked up his mug and drained the last of the tea.

      ‘Oh,’ Amy said inanely into the silence. There was no compassion in that. No empathy. Richard had been foolish, but he didn’t deserve to be so publicly humiliated by the people he loved. If—or rather when—the split came it would be so much better for it to have nothing to do with Hugh. ‘Will Sonya and Richard drive over for the regatta?’

      ‘Richard’s not well enough this year. His angina has caused him a lot of discomfort recently—for all he doesn’t want to admit it.’

      ‘Are you going to do it, imp?’ Seb asked, smiling at his sister’s expression.

      She chewed at her bottom lip. Her brother knew her too well. ‘In theory…I suppose I could. But just for two weeks…and I’m going to charge you a ludicrous amount of money.’

      ‘Excellent,’ Seb said buoyantly. ‘I knew you’d do it.’

      ‘In theory. It’s not as simple as you two make it sound. I don’t think my overdraft is going to stretch to a bed and breakfast anywhere.’

      ‘Who said anything about that? You can stay at my place,’ Hugh said decisively as he stood up.

      ‘I can’t stay with you!’

      ‘Of course you can. I’ve got plenty of room.’

      Which rather missed the point she was trying to make. ‘And Calantha? What will she think about that?’

      Hugh frowned. ‘Why should she think anything? It’s the obvious thing to do. We can settle the final details later.’ He turned to Seb. ‘I do need to head back. Are you walking over to the house later?’

      ‘Give us an hour. There’s no desperate hurry. I drove the picnic over to the cricket pitch before any decent human being should be awake so we’ve bagged our spot.’

      Amy let the conversation carry on without her as she slipped out of the door and up the narrow cottage stairs to her bedroom at the back of the house. Unobserved and unremarked upon, she thought, flopping on the black antique bed covered with the patchwork quilt her mum had finished the summer before she’d died.

      Twenty-three today and unemployed—as Hugh had said. It was actually a bit depressing. Except not unemployed any longer. Somehow she’d agreed to become Hugh’s PA and anything more degrading she could scarcely imagine. If he imagined for one moment she was going to make his tea and field telephone calls from would-be girlfriends, he was going to be disappointed.

      But protect him from Sonya? Yes, she would do that.

      She looked up at the crack in the low ceiling. And she’d have to stay in his home. There was no choice. The sofa bed in Seb’s flat wasn’t very appealing and her bank balance wouldn’t stretch to the cost of commuting.

      It would be nice to think Calantha wouldn’t like it. It wasn’t at all flattering for Hugh to be so completely unaware of her as a woman. She obviously hadn’t registered on his antennae as anything other than ‘little Amy, Seb’s kid sister’. Which shouldn’t bother her at all—but did. Obviously.

      Jumping off the bed, she lifted the latch on the cupboard door where she kept her clothes and looked despairingly at the meagre contents. The cheque her father had sent for her birthday might have been used to buy something with ‘wow’ factor for the regatta, but it had arrived this morning and there hadn’t been time.

      The dress code was so specific: no trousers, СКАЧАТЬ