Fantasy For Two. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ to himself, Alex turned away from her and headed for the front door.

      ‘Maybe not,’ he muttered to himself under his breath as he angrily yanked the door open and strode through it. ‘But you sure as hell frighten me.’

      No wonder he had stormed off like that, Mollie crowed in mental triumph as she firmly slammed the door after him. He had known she had him routed, that she couldn’t be bullied or pushed or cowed, as he had no doubt expected.

      Walking back into her living room, she absentmindedly picked up one of the peaches and bit deeply into it. The fruit was luscious and sweet, with a taste that made her close her eyes in momentary sensual bliss.

      ‘Mmm...yummy...’

      She had virtually finished the peach before she remembered what she had said to its donor. Well, never mind, she wasn’t one to look a gift-horse in the mouth, she told herself stoutly. How many peaches were there exactly in that basket? Three more... Well, it would be wasteful not to eat them, an insult to whoever had taken such care in growing and nurturing them...

      

      The next day, standing in Bob’s office whilst she waited for him to finish reading her article, Mollie was still seething over her run-in with Alex. How dare he threaten her? He was typical of his type: rich, arrogant, completely oblivious to the thoughts and feelings of others.

      But it was his threat to her article that concerned her the most and possessed her thoughts, not what had gone before it. In fact that kiss they had shared, and her own regrettably insane and inadmissibly intense response to it, was something she simply wasn’t prepared to dwell on or give any kind of credence to by thinking about it. Everyone was permitted the odd small aberration.

      She had been under stress, caught off guard. He had no doubt expected her to reject him, and would have enjoyed having her behave in what to him would have been a predictably female and victimish way. By kissing him back, by showing no fear, she had shown him that she was not so predictable, so easily readable, that she was not the kind of woman who was going to be overawed or daunted by him.

      She was no fool. Of course there would be members of her sex who would be silly enough to be taken in by his good looks and by the aura of success and maleness that clung to him, but she was most certainly not one of them.

      Bob had reached the end of her article. He put it down and removed his spectacles, and then frowned as he told her baldly, ‘We can’t print this. You do realise that people locally will assume that this landlord you refer to is Alex, and—?’

      ‘And because he happens to own half the county no one is allowed to say or write anything that might show him up in his true colours? Is that it?’ Mollie interrupted him hotly.

      Bob Fleury’s frown deepened as he looked at her.

      His grandfather on his mother’s side had been a Scot, and Bob had inherited some of his dourness and his cautious carefulness, which balanced his more unpredictable French trait. Now, as he placed both his hands on his desk and studied Mollie, he chose his words very carefully.

      She was such a fiery young thing, with so much still to learn, but he liked her. She had spirit and, just as important, she genuinely cared about her fellow human beings. He had no time for these cynical and worldly young people who seemed bored with their lives before they had really begun.

      ‘Is that what you think—that Alex is the kind of landlord you’ve written about in this article?’

      ‘Well, isn’t he?’ Mollie challenged him.

      ‘No,’ Bob told her promptly and firmly. ‘I’ve known Alex all his life and there is no way he would ever treat his tenants badly. In fact, one of the first things he did after his father’s death was set about raising enough money to ensure that those who had worked for his father and were close to retirement could be securely housed when they reached retirement age.

      ‘He had to fight like the devil to get his plans past the local planning committee as well. Simply allowing people to stay on in the often remote cottages they had occupied during their working lives wasn’t enough for Alex. No. What he did was bring in an architect and instruct him to design purpose-built units suitable for independent elderly people to live in.’

      Now it was Mollie’s turn to frown.

      ‘Anyone can make plans...promises...’ she began, but Bob shook his head, forestalling her.

      ‘Alex did more than that,’ he told her firmly. ‘Wherever he owns an estate he has financed the building of a small development of these units, close to all the local amenities and complete with resident wardens and facilities for the disabled. He’s even financed a nursing home for those ex-employees who can no longer manage to live by themselves.’

      ‘But Pat said—’ Mollie began, only to have her boss cut across her objection a second time.

      ‘There’s no way Pat Lawson would ever criticise Alex,’ he told her. ‘She thinks the world of him.’

      Mollie looked away. It was true that Pat Lawson had never actually mentioned Alex by name, she acknowledged unhappily, but she had assumed when the older woman had agreed with her own comments that she had known that Mollie was obliquely referring to him.

      ‘No, I’m sorry,’ she heard Bob telling her, and he very firmly tore her prized article in two, and then two again, before depositing the pieces in his wastepaper basket.

      Then he asked her, ‘Did you get Pat’s recipe?’

      

      ‘She’s young and enthusiastic,’ his wife reminded him gently later in the day, when they were having lunch together at the White Swan. The pub had originally been a coaching inn, and since it was owned by Alex it had escaped any kind of themed modernisation and was still very much a traditional English pub, with proper English food including Bob’s favourite steak and ale pie.

      ‘She needs something she can get her teeth into,’ Eileen added. ‘She doesn’t want to write about recipes and knitting patterns.’

      ‘Maybe so, but I can’t understand her—to write something like that about Alex of all people...’ Bob said, shaking his head. ‘I told her one of the first things any journalist worth their salt has to learn is to get their facts right. I mean Alex... I can’t think what’s got into the girl. She seems to have taken a real dislike to him.’

      ‘She needs a crusade...’ Eileen told him wisely, before adding firmly, ‘You know what the doctor said about your cholesterol level. Why don’t you have the chicken salad?’

      

      Mollie could feel her ears burning hotly as she walked through the Gazette’s main office. No doubt everyone had heard Bob rubbishing her article this morning. Well, she didn’t care what Bob said; she knew, she just knew that there was no way that Alex was as white as he liked to be painted. After all, she had firsthand knowledge of just how badly he could behave when he wanted to, hadn’t she?

      A brief touch on her arm made her jump. She turned her head to find Bob’s secretary smiling at her.

      ‘I was just going out for lunch,’ she told Mollie, ‘and I wondered if you’d like to come with me.’

      ‘I’d СКАЧАТЬ