Penny Jordan - Mistaken Adversary

Wearily Georgia stood up, clutching the back of her chair when she went slightly dizzy. She had not, she realised, eaten anything since suppertime last night, and even then she had pushed away the meal she had made barely touched.

Perhaps the discipline of having to provide meals for a lodger might force her to eat more sensibly. In these last few weeks since her aunt had gone into the hospice, she had found preparing and then eating her solitary meals more and more of a burden. Some evenings, once she returned from her final visit of the day to the hospice, she felt far too drained of energy and emotionally wrought-up to bear to eat, and yet logically and intelligently she knew that she needed the energy that came from a healthy well-balanced diet.

She glanced out of the window and saw the car stop outside the front gate. A steel-grey BMW saloon, it looked sleekly, almost arrogantly out of place outside her humble home.

As she went downstairs she reflected that this Mitch Fletcher was probably writing the cottage off as unsuitable even before she opened the door. She did not, she acknowledged as she went towards the front door, really want the hassle, the responsibility, of sharing her home with someone else. She was afraid that the inevitable inroads it would make into her life would somehow threaten the need she felt to devote every second of her spare time either to being with her aunt or willing her to get better, to recover and come home.

When she opened the door the cool words of greeting and introduction hovering on her lips fled in disordered confusion as she recognised the man standing there.

As he stepped forward, Georgia recognised that, infuriatingly, she had somehow or other by her silence lost control of the situation—because it was he who broke the silence, extending his hand towards her and saying, ‘Miss Barnes? Mitchell Fletcher. I understand from Louise Mather that you have a room you’d be prepared to let. I think she’s explained the position to you: I’m looking for somewhere temporary to stay while I’m working in the area.’

As he spoke, he came forward, and Georgia discovered that she was stepping back almost automatically, allowing him to walk into the hallway.

Until he suddenly stopped, she hadn’t realised that the shadows in her small hallway had cloaked her features from him, and that he had not, like her, had the benefit of that instant recognition.

Now, as he focused on her, she saw from his lightning change of expression that he had recognised her from their unfortunate encounter earlier in the day and, moreover, that he was not exactly pleased to be seeing her again.

His reaction to her brought all her earlier guilt and discomfort flooding back. Before, when she had so rudely ignored the brief moment of shared amusement he had offered her, she had comforted herself with the knowledge that they were not likely to meet again and that his awareness of her bad temper and unpleasantness was something that was unlikely to be reinforced by another encounter. But she had been wrong and, as she felt her skin flushing as the coolness in his eyes reminded her of just how unpleasant she had been, she had to subdue an extremely childish impulse to close the door between them and shut him out so that she wouldn’t have to face that extremely uncomfortable scrutiny.

It seemed that he was waiting for her to speak and, since he had now stepped into her hall, she had no option but to at least go through the motions of pretending that this morning simply had not happened, and that neither of them had already made up their minds that there was simply no way they could ever share a roof...

‘Yes, Louise has explained the situation to me,’ Georgia agreed. ‘If you’d like to come into the kitchen we can discuss everything.’

She had deliberately asked Louise not to mention her aunt or the latter’s illness to Mitch Fletcher, not wanting it to seem as though she was inviting his pity.

Late afternoon sunshine flooded the comfortable kitchen. It was her aunt’s favourite room, reminiscent, so she had told Georgia the first time they viewed the cottage, of the home she had known as a girl. On hearing that, Georgia had ruthlessly changed her mind about replacing the kitchen’s ancient Aga with something more modern and getting rid of its heavy free-standing kitchen cupboards and dresser. Instead, she had done everything she could to reinforce Aunt May’s pleasure in the room’s homeliness—even if she did sometimes find that scouring the porous stone sink had a disastrous effect on her nails, and that the Aga, while giving off a delicious warmth, was not always as efficient as the modern electric oven she had had in her London flat. Maybe it was just that she was not accustomed to using it... Whatever, there had been several expensive mistakes before she had begun to appreciate its charms.

Once inside the kitchen, she waited, expecting to see distaste and scorn darkening Mitchell Fletcher’s astonishingly masculine golden eyes as he compared the kitchen to the marvels of modern technology to which he was no doubt accustomed. To her surprise he seemed to approve of the room, stroking the surface of the dresser and commenting, ‘Mid-nineteenth century, isn’t it? A very nice piece too... Solid and well made. A good, plain, unpretentious piece of furniture without any unnecessary frills and fuss about it. Good design is one of my hobby horses,’ he enlightened her. ‘That’s why—’ He broke off. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sure you don’t want to hear my views on modern furniture,’ he told her drily, adding in a more ironic tone, ‘And I know you won’t want me to waste too much of your time.’

She thought he was referring to her behaviour earlier in the day and could feel her face growing warm until he added, ‘Louise did warn me that you would want to keep this interview short. In fact she stressed that you were looking for a lodger who made as few demands on your time as possible.’ He was eyeing her in an odd way, with a mingling of cynicism and curiosity, as he asked her, ‘If it isn’t too personal a question, why exactly do you want a lodger?’

Georgia was too tired to lie and, besides, what did it matter what he thought? They both knew that he was not going to want to stay here. ‘I need the money,’ she told him shortly.

There was a brief pause and then he said wryly, ‘Well, that’s honest at least. You need the money, but I suspect that you most certainly do not want the company...’

For some reason his perception made her shift uncomfortably, almost as though a burr had physically attached itself to her skin and was irritating her, making her want to shrug off his allegation. ‘As Louise told you, I don’t have time to waste, Mr Fletcher. I’m sorry you’ve had an unnecessary journey out here, but in the circumstances I don’t think—’

‘Hang on a minute!’ he interrupted her. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you’ve changed your mind, that you don’t now want a lodger?’

Georgia stared at him. ‘Well, you can hardly want to lodge here...’

‘Why not?’ he demanded, watching her piercingly.

Georgia didn’t know what to say. She could feel the heat scorching her skin, turning her face poppy-red. ‘Well, the cottage is out of the way...and very small, and I expect...at least I assume—’

‘It never does to make assumptions,’ he interrupted her smoothly. Too smoothly, Georgia recognised uncomfortably. ‘And if you think that I’m the kind of man to be deterred by what happened this morning... You don’t have to like me, Miss Barnes—in fact to be honest with you the one thing that did tend to put me off was the fact that you are a young, single woman.’ He ignored her outraged gasp, continuing silkily, ‘I don’t mean to condemn your whole sex for the silliness of a very small minority, but I’m sure you’ll appreciate that, until meeting you, I was concerned that you might well be a member of that small minority—’