The Forbidden Promise. Lorna Cook

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СКАЧАТЬ don’t mind? Well that’s just …’ He shook his head in disbelief, stepping back and folding his arms. Kate was in no condition to drive but she got back in and managed to straighten the car and pull it slightly off the road, onto the gravel by the side. She switched her hazard lights on given that she was still on the wrong side of the road. And then she wasn’t really sure what to do. The man was still standing there. Surely this was the point where both of them would leave and go about the rest of their evenings, but he seemed to be watching her expectantly.

      Kate got back out of the car and stood awkwardly by the open door. She’d never been in a road accident before, not that this really was a road accident, but the look he was giving her made her think that if she drove on he’d have the police chasing her within minutes.

      ‘So, what happens now?’ she ventured.

      ‘What do you mean?’ He looked baffled.

      ‘Do we … um … do we exchange details?’

      He narrowed his eyes again. ‘Why would we do that?’

      Kate felt about two feet tall. ‘I’m not sure,’ was all she could say quietly. She was eager to be back in the car – so shaken she wasn’t sure she could drive if she was really honest with herself but it was better than standing here with him.

      ‘We don’t need to do anything,’ he said.

      ‘OK,’ Kate agreed.

      His arms were still folded.

      She started to apologise again but he cut her off. He glanced pointedly at his phone, strapped to a band on his wrist.

      ‘Chalk it up to experience.’ He put his headphones in his ears, fiddled with his phone, turned and continued jogging away.

      Kate watched his retreating figure and when he rounded the bend she slumped against the car and exhaled loudly, relieved he was gone. Chalk it up to experience? How sanctimonious. What did he even mean by that? Regardless, she was thankful he wasn’t pressing charges and that she’d never have to see him again. Kate looked back down the road to where he’d turned out of sight.

      ‘What a bastard.’

      She could have cried. What was she even doing here?

       CHAPTER 3

      Kate climbed back into the car and grabbed her handbag from where it had fallen into the passenger footwell. She took out her small bundle of good luck cards and reread her favourite, from her best friend Jenny. On the front was a picture of Kate holding an empty Champagne bottle upside down towards her mouth. She was pulling a stupid, but happy expression. It was only a few months old, but remembering the celebrations from the day she’d been promoted to senior PR manager still made her smile.

      Inside the card wasn’t the usual ‘Good Luck’ message. Instead it said, ‘From drunken dare to worst nightmare. Knock ’em dead.’

      Oh God, the dare. What had Kate been thinking, coming here on a whim and a dare? She couldn’t lay all the blame at Jenny’s door. It hadn’t been Jenny’s fault that Kate had quite simply had enough. If she had to turn up to promote any more bar openings with mediocre guest lists full of Z-list models and footballers’ wives treating her like dirt she would have screamed. What was it about the almost famous that made them think they could talk to her and her colleagues like they were skivvies? And then when one had accused her of flirting with her husband. Well, the fallout from that had been unbearable. She knew why she was here if she really stopped to think about it. She needed to rebuild her reputation, away from the claustrophobic glare of London, her office, her colleagues, everyone who knew the awful situation she’d got herself in that night. The shame of the accusation was what had driven her here, as far away as she could possibly get. After the indignity and humiliation of the formal warning she’d received at work the next day, Jenny had drunkenly applied online for two jobs for her.

      ‘You’ve always said you wanted to travel more,’ Jenny had slurred, loading up a jobs website on her laptop. ‘From Land’s End to John o’Groats. I dare you. Where do you fancy?’

      ‘Anywhere, anywhere, just fill the bloody forms in, attach my CV and hit send. It could be in Timbuktu for all I care. As long as I never have to deal with some reality TV contestant falling out of a bar drunk and into the lens of their own pre-organised waiting paparazzi, then it can be anywhere you like,’ Kate had declared.

      Jenny had hit send, they’d clinked glasses and Kate had forgotten all about it. Until a week later when a rejection email from a hotel in Cornwall had fallen into Kate’s inbox. Apparently she didn’t have enough experience promoting regional food and had not even made it through to the interview stage. She felt a slight pang of regret over the loss of a job she hadn’t even known existed until that very moment. And it had set her thinking: maybe a change of scenery was the very thing she needed. No more awful bars. No celebrity hangouts. A chance to start afresh with her reputation intact.

      And so when the second job application had proven fruitful and the owner of Invermoray House in Scotland interviewed Kate via an hour-long phone call and offered her the job at the end of it, she had jumped up and down for a full two minutes in joy.

      ‘Not much in the way of visitors,’ she had told Kate. ‘Which we’re hoping you can help with of course, dear. We’re very out of the way up here.’

      ‘Sounds perfect.’ Kate had felt triumphant, knowing soon she’d be away from run-of-the-mill PR assignments. And it wasn’t as if she had a relationship to tie her down. She’d been single for about a year and very happy about it. ‘I accept.’

      But now it was a different story. Lost and in the fading light, Kate had never felt so alone.

      By the time she eventually found it, her satnav back up and running, Invermoray House was bathed in twilight. Kate drove down the long driveway and onto the large gravel sweep in front of the house. Her eyebrows rose involuntarily as she took in the grandeur of the building, marvelling at the way it was downplayed as a house when it was more a castle. As she pulled up, the car headlights gave the baronial building a warm yellow glow.

      Kate barely had time to drag her suitcases from the boot before the large wooden front door was pulled open and a lady in her mid-sixties walked towards her.

      ‘Can I help you?’ She had kind, smiling eyes and bob-length straight brown hair.

      Kate recognised her voice. ‘I’m sorry I’m so late. You must be Mrs Langley-McLay?’

      ‘Yes, my dear.’ She gave Kate’s suitcases the once-over. ‘You aren’t Kate, are you?’

      Kate nodded and Mrs Langley-McLay’s eyebrows knitted together.

      ‘Then you aren’t late at all, my dear. You’re a day early.’

      Kate’s face fell. ‘What? I can’t be.’

      The woman laughed. ‘We said we’d start tomorrow, so I assumed you would arrive tomorrow.’

      ‘Oh, I just thought …’ Kate’s voice trailed away.

      ‘Well.’ Mrs Langley-McLay moved forward to help Kate with her cases. ‘There’s СКАЧАТЬ