Liz Fielding - Christmas Angel for the Billionaire

‘Told me what?’ she asked him.

‘That you’ve broken your crankshaft.’

‘No,’ she said, swiftly tiring of the novelty of his rudeness. A gentleman would have ignored the fact that she was having a seriously bad hair day rather than staring at the disaster in undisguised horror. ‘I gave my ankle a bit of a jolt in that pothole but, unless things have changed since I studied anatomy, I don’t believe that I have a crankshaft.’

Xandra snorted tea down her nose as she laughed, earning herself a quelling look from her father.

‘You’ve broken the crankshaft that drives the wheels of your car,’ he said heavily, quashing any thought she might have of joining in. ‘It’ll have to be replaced.’

‘If I knew what a crankshaft was,’ she replied, ‘I suspect that I’d be worried. How long will it take?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ll have to ring around in the morning and see if there’s anyone who can deal with it as an emergency.’

Annie heard what he said but even when she ran through it again it still made no sense.

‘Why?’ she asked finally.

He had the nerve to turn a pair of slate-grey eyes on her and regard her as if her wits had gone begging.

‘I assume you want it repaired?’

‘Of course I want it repaired. That’s why I called you. You’re a garage. You fix cars. So fix it.’

‘I’m sorry but that’s impossible.’

‘You don’t sound sorry.’

‘He isn’t. While Granddad’s lying helpless in hospital he’s going to shut down a garage that’s been in the family for nearly a hundred years.’

‘Are you?’ she asked, keeping her gaze fixed firmly on him. ‘That doesn’t sound very sporting.’

He looked right back and she could see a pale fan of lines around his eyes that in anyone else she’d have thought were laughter lines.

‘He flew all the way from California for that very purpose,’ his daughter said when he didn’t bother to answer.

‘California?’ Well, that certainly explained the lines around his eyes. Screwing them up against the sun rather than an excess of good humour. ‘How interesting. What do you do in California, Mr Saxon?’

Her life consisted of asking polite questions, drawing people out of their shell, showing an interest. She had responded with her ‘Lady Rose’ voice and she’d have liked to pretend that this was merely habit rather than genuine interest, but that would be a big fat fib. There was something about George Saxon that aroused a lot more than polite interest in her maidenly breast.

His raised eyebrow suggested that what he did in the US was none of her business and he was undoubtedly right, but his daughter was happy to fill the gap.

‘According to my mother,’ she said, ‘George is a beach bum.’

At this point ‘Lady Rose’ would have smiled politely and moved on. Annie didn’t have to do that.

‘Is your mother right?’ she asked.

‘He doesn’t go to work unless he feels like it. Lives on the beach. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck…’

She was looking at George, talking to him, but the replies kept coming from his daughter, stage left, and Annie shook her head just once, lifted a hand to silence the girl, waiting for him to answer her question.

‘I’ M AFRAIDit’s your bad luck that my daughter answered your call,’ George replied, not bothering to either confirm or deny it. ‘If I’d got to the phone first I’d have told you to ring someone else.’

‘I see. So why didn’t you simply call another garage and arrange for them to pick me up?’ Annie asked, genuinely puzzled.

‘It would have taken too long and, since you were on your own…’ He let it go.

She didn’t.

‘Oh, I see . You’re a gentleman beach bum?’

‘Don’t count on it,’ he replied.

No. She wouldn’t do that, but he appeared to have a conscience and she could work with that.

She’d had years of experience in parting millionaires from their money in a good cause and this seemed like a very good moment to put what she’d learned to use on her own behalf.

‘It’s a pity your concern doesn’t stretch as far as fixing my car.’ Since his only response was to remove his jacket and hang it over the back of a chair, the clearest statement that he was going nowhere, she continued. ‘So, George…’ use his name, imply that they were friends ‘…having brought me here under false pretences, what do you suggest I do now?’

‘I suggest you finish your tea, Annie…’ and the way he emphasized her name suggested he knew exactly what game she was playing ‘…then I suggest you call a taxi.’

Well, that didn’t go as well as she’d hoped.

‘I thought the deal was that you were going to run me there,’ she reminded him.

‘It’s been a long day. You’ll find a directory by the phone. It’s through there. In the hall,’ he added, just in case she was labouring under the misapprehension that he would do it for her. Then, having glanced at the cup of instant coffee and the delicate china cups she’d laid out, he took a large mug-one that she’d just washed-from the rack over the sink and filled it with tea.

Annie had been raised to be a lady and her first reaction, even under these trying circumstances, was to apologise for being a nuisance.

There had been a moment, right after that lorry had borne down on her out of the dark and she’d thought her last moment had come, when the temptation to accept defeat had very nearly got the better of her.

Shivering with shock at her close brush with eternity as much as the cold, it would have been so easy to put in the call that would bring a chauffeur-driven limousine to pick her up, return her home with nothing but a very bad haircut and a lecture on irresponsibility from her grandfather to show for her adventure.

But she’d wanted reality and that meant dealing with the rough as well as the smooth. Breaking down on a dark country road was no fun, but Lydia wouldn’t have been able to walk away, leave someone else to pick up the pieces. She’d have to deal with the mechanic who’d responded to her call, no matter how unwillingly. How lacking in the ethos of customer service.

Lydia, she was absolutely certain, wouldn’t apologise to him for expecting him to do his job, but demand he got on with it.

She could do no less.

‘I’m sorry,’ she began, but she wasn’t apologising for being a nuisance. Far from it. Instead, she picked up her tea and polite as you please, went on. ‘I’m afraid that is quite unacceptable. When you responded to my call you entered into a contract and I insist that you honour it.’

George Saxon paused in the act of spooning sugar into his tea and glanced up at her from beneath a lick of dark hair that had slid across his forehead.

‘Is that right?’ he asked.

He didn’t sound particularly impressed.

‘Under the terms of the Goods and Services Act,’ she added, with the poise of a woman for whom addressing a room full of strangers was an everyday occurrence, ‘nineteen eighty-three.’ The Act was real enough, even if she’d made up the date. The trick was to look as if you knew what you were talking about and a date-even if it was the first one that came into her head-added veracity to even the most outrageous statement.

This time he did smile and deep creases bracketed his face, his mouth, fanned out around those slate eyes. Maybe not just the sun, then…

‘You just made that up, Annie Rowland,’ he said, calling her bluff.

She pushed up the spectacles that kept sliding down her nose and smiled right back.

‘I’ll just wait here while you go to the local library and check,’ she said, lowering herself into the unoccupied Morris chair. ‘Unless you have a copy?’ Balancing the saucer in one hand, she used the other to pick up her tea and sip it. ‘Although, since you’re clearly unfamiliar with the legislation, I’m assuming that you don’t.’