His Personal Agenda. Liz Fielding

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      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      MATT CROSBY considered the man sitting behind the vast mahogany desk with a certain detachment. Charles Parker was not an easy man to warm to, but he would pay well and Matt had a lot of expenses.

      ‘I don’t have to explain the problem to you, Crosby,’ he said, sliding a file across the polished acres of mahogany. ‘This woman is a troublemaker. She’s holding up an important development, something badly needed, and she’s got to be stopped.’

      Matt wasn’t taken in by protestations of concern for the public interest. Charles Parker’s only concern was for profit. But he picked up the file and contemplated the photograph of a young woman clipped to the inside cover.

      Nyssa Blake. The face that launched a thousand town planning appeals.

      She headed the wish list of every property developer in Britain. And they all wished the same thing. That she would go away.

      According to the brief biography attached she was a few months shy of her twenty-third birthday, but she was already capable of making Charles Parker reach for the panic button. With good reason. Her track record for forcing developers to ‘think again’ was impressive.

      ‘She can’t be allowed to get away with it,’ Parker insisted impatiently.

      ‘No, I suppose not.’ After all, if she wasn’t stopped soon she might get the crazy idea that she could do anything. Matt had been twenty-two himself once, and just about remembered having ideals and a burning desire to put the world to rights, remembered that youthful sense of invincibility that didn’t know when it was beaten. He’d learned the hard way.

      Parker glanced at him sharply. ‘There’s no suppose about it.’ Then, ‘That file contains just about everything that anyone has ever written about her, and my secretary will give you video tapes…news coverage of her last campaign—’

      ‘An out-of-town shopping park, wasn’t it?’

      Parker shuddered. ‘She brought in a botanist who was supposed to have found some rare species no one had ever heard of and cared even less about.’

      ‘Out-of-town shopping has become very un-PC. The local authority was probably glad of any excuse to stop it.’ Parker glared at him and Matt shrugged. ‘What do you want me to do?’

      ‘Don’t tempt me.’ Parker laughed shortly. He was seriously rattled, seriously worried, Matt decided. Well, he’d heard rumours that Parker was having cash-flow problems. Any delay would hurt him badly. ‘What I’d really like is for someone to shut her up in some deep, dark dungeon and throw away the key.’ When Matt was unresponsive to this suggestion Parker shrugged. ‘No, well, maybe not.’ And he added a little laugh, just to show that he hadn’t really meant it.

      Matt was not entirely convinced. ‘I won’t be involved in anything like that,’ he said.

      ‘Who would? As well as being the darling the of media, a myth in her own lifetime, she also has some powerful family connections.’ He nodded towards the file. ‘It’s all there. See what you can do with it.’

      The file was certainly a hefty one, but Matt Crosby put it back on the desk. ‘I’m sure she’s a serious pain in the backside but I just don’t see what you expect me to do about it. I know some of her hangers-on can get a bit out of hand, but she’s a perfect Miss Goody Two-Shoes from all accounts. Never puts a foot wrong.’

      ‘Well, if she’s looking for evidence that the Gaumont Cinema at Delvering is worth saving she’ll have to break in to find it.’

      ‘Maybe you should just give her a guided tour, show her that she’s wasting her time? Maybe you should just bulldoze the place down?’ Parker didn’t respond to any of those suggestions. Matt shrugged. ‘Well, I suppose a court appearance would tarnish the halo…’

      ‘If you think I’m paying your kind of fees just to see her get a fifty-pound fine and a ticking off at the local magistrates’ court, you can think again.’

      ‘Faced with a brick wall,’ Matt pointed out, ‘you have two choices—bang your head against it, or take it down brick by brick.’

      Parker snorted. ‘I haven’t got time for games. This is urgent.’ He leaned forward. ‘You come highly recommended as a troubleshooter, Crosby. This girl is trouble and I want her…’ He hesitated.

      ‘Shot?’ Matt offered helpfully.

      Parker glared at him. ‘Out of my hair. You’re supposed to be some kind of genius at digging up those nasty little secrets people would rather keep buried—’

      ‘You make a lot of enemies that way.’ Matt looked at the solemn-faced young woman in the photograph. He’d СКАЧАТЬ