Diana Hamilton - Sweet Sinner

But he was feeding terse directions into the handset of his car phone and when he had finished she spluttered out, ‘The way I earn my living is nothing to do with you! And anyway, you’ve got everything wrong. I’m—’

‘Save the justifications. I don’t want to know. A taxi should be here in a matter of minutes. I’ll wait until it gets here.’ He left the car again, towering above her, his features a mask of bored indifference now as he told her, ‘Next time you let yourself get into the kind of trouble you were in tonight just remember that the odds against someone happening by to pick up the pieces are extremely long. A million to one, at a guess.’

He looked as if he deeply regretted the impulse to stop and investigate, to make sure that the tarty object he’d witnessed being hurled out of a barely stationary car hadn’t sustained any incapacitating injuries.

Zoe turned huffily away, uncomfortably aware that the few words he’d allowed her to get out must have reinforoed his definition of her morals. Non-existent. She was not going to thank him for finding her a taxi. Why should she? The opening to lecture and moralise, jump up on his high horse, was all the recompense he could look for. She was far too sore in mind and body to look at the situation from his point of view.

Too drained by events to argue further, she waited in defeated silence until the black cab arrived, gave the driver her home address and climbed into the back with her nose at a haughty angle, not looking at her pious knight-errant because she knew she would die of embarrassment if she did. And sat in the back devising a hundred and one ways of doing Gary Fletcher to death.

‘When I agreed to rent part of your house I didn’t know I’d be sharing with a low-down, rotten, treacherous fink!’ Zoe limped into the kitchen, her mane of blonde hair still wet from the shower and thankfully free of last night’s riotous curls.

‘And good morning to you, too.’ Gary was deep in the morning edition of the tabloid he worked on and his bluntly good looking features wore a beatific expression as he hitched it down and smiled at her over the top. ‘Breakfast?’

‘An abject apology would be preferable,’ Zoe grumbled. She hadn’t slept, she’d been too embarrassed by recent events, and just to pile on the agony she was sore all over this morning. ‘But if that’s too much to expect from a hard-nosed reporter I’ll settle for coffee. Fresh, black and strong.’ She swivelled back towards the door. ‘In ten minutes.’ Adding darkly, ‘I’m due at the office by ten, but I’ll speak to you later!’

‘But you don’t work on Saturdays,’ Gary objected, patting a vacant stool at the breakfast bar. ‘Come and tell me what’s put vinegar in your pretty mouth this morning.’

‘But I am today,’ she countered with heavy, forced patience. ‘Special clients get special concessions. Which was one of the too-numerous-to-mention reasons why I didn’t want to go to that dreadful party last night.’ Which he had conveniently forgotten. He only remembered what he wanted to, and what he had forgotten he made up. Which was what made him such a good reporter, she supposed, earning him his byline with a tabloid which was openly derided and universally read.

‘But it was a beautiful party, sweetheart.’ Gary’s grin threatened to split his face. ‘Hannah’s agreed to give it another go. We’re back together again and—even better—she’s going to move in with me. If it works out we’re going to make it legal.’

‘That’s wonderful!’ Zoe’s small, triangular face warmed into a lovely smile. She had forgotten to be cross. She was generously pleased for him, despite what he had put her through.

During the three years they’d shared this house she had watched the arrivals and departures of Gary’s girlfriends with a fairly impartial eye. But Hannah had been special, she had been able to tell that by the way he looked at her, the way he never stopped talking about her. And then there had been the row, the big one. Zoe had never learned the reason, but the upshot had been an abrupt break-off of the relationship. And the upshot of that had been Gary’s long face and heartrending sighs, his sudden lack of interest in anything.

And that was why, after a great deal of persuasion, she’d agreed to go to that party. Because he’d begged. It was an annual thing, a fancy dress thrash for the members—and their guests—of the tennis club he’d recently joined because Hannah was a staunch member herself and where she was, Gary needed to be. And if Hannah could see him with another woman—a gorgeous woman—she might just be jealous. And if she was jealous he could work on it, persuade her to come back to him. That had been the theory.

The theme of Tarts and Vicars hadn’t appealed, though. Zoe was something of a blue-stocking and not ashamed of it, and she’d spent most of her life being sensible and responsible. So she’d said, ‘It won’t work. Hannah knows me. I’m your tenant, that’s all.’ But Gary had had an answer for that.

‘Don’t you believe it! Hannah never did like the idea of my sharing a pad with two gorgeous females. She was always the teeniest bit miffed by the intimacies she imagined we shared.’

‘I suppose I could always go as a Vicar,’ Zoe had offered, not seeing herself as the other, and Gary had scorned,

‘If you think Hannah will see you as sexy competition dressed up as a clerical gent, you’re off your trolley.’

And Jenna, the third inhabitant of the tall, early Victorian brown-brick terraced house, had echoed his scorn.

‘You’d defeat the object of the exercise. I’d go myself if I didn’t already have a heavy date. It’ll be fun, and I’ll help you. Make-up, hair, clothes—leave it to me.’ As an aspiring actress with her first TV part firmly in her pocket, Jenna exuded the type of confidence that was enough to persuade anyone to do anything.

So Zoe had agreed to go, for the sake of Gary’s love-life. He’d been impossible since Hannah had given him the elbow. And even though she’d hated the way Jenna had made her look, she’d decided it might be fun as long as she forgot she was Zoe Kilgerran, one of the junior partners in a firm of big city accountants, responsible, sensible and—let’s face it—a tiny bit dull.

‘So you’ll understand if I ask if you’d share the basement with Jenna? Starting as of today.’ Gary put a steaming mug of black coffee into her hands, his face very bland. ‘Hannah and I want the house to ourselves. You know how it is…We want to be able to run around naked if we feel like it, make love on the kitchen table…Anyway, did you get home OK last night?’

‘I thought you’d never ask,’ Zoe grouched, memories of what had happened to her flooding back. And knowing she was expected to move into the basement flat today didn’t help to make her feel any sunnier.

She fully understood Gary’s and Hannah’s need to have their own space—it looked as if this was the real thing. But Dad was bringing the twins round this afternoon, leaving them with her for the weekend, and the basement flat was small and she’d never get her stuff shifted before they arrived—not with the meeting she had this morning.

Her lower lip jutted pugnaciously.

‘I understood why you couldn’t escort me home from that party—you’d got it together with Hannah and couldn’t give a damn what happened to me——’

‘Hang on!’ Gary shot her a hurt look which somehow didn’t ring true. ‘I fixed you a ride home, didn’t I?’

‘So you did, silly me!’ Sarcasm dripped off her tongue. ‘With a sex maniac who ended up throwing me out of the car in some godforsaken back street, where I got lectured by some passing do-gooder on the foolhardiness of my trade! So much better, of course, than my own idea of taking a cab home! And don’t you dare laugh!’ she shrieked as she saw his mouth twitch. And proceeded to fill him in on the details, which sobered him and enabled her blood-pressure to slide back from danger point.