His Pretend Mistress. Jessica Steele

her that he too thought she looked a sight! He needn’t have agreed with her. ‘Not a scrap!’ she answered shortly, and, delaying only to put on her sodden sandals, she joined him at the door.

      The nearer they got to Almora Lodge, though, and nerves started to get the better of her. So that by the time Harris had pulled up outside the house, she had started to shake.

      ‘You’ll come in with me?’ she questioned jerkily when all those terrible happenings began to replay in her head, refusing to leave. Suddenly she felt too afraid to get out of the car.

      ‘I’ll be with you most every step of the way,’ he replied, his expression grim.

      The front door was unlocked. Harris didn’t bother to knock but, tall and angry beside her, he went straight in. There was no sign of Roland Phillips.

      ‘I’ll be one minute,’ Harris said. ‘If you see Phillips before I do, yell.’

      Mallon waited nervously at the bottom of the stairs while Harris headed in the direction of the drawing room. She waited anxiously when he went from her sight. Then she thought she heard a small short sound that might have been a bit of a groan, then a thud—but she had no intention of venturing anywhere to find out what it was all about.

      And, true to his word, barely a minute later Harris appeared. He was with her every step of the way too as they went up the stairs. He stayed close by while she packed her cases and retrieved her handbag.

      She had been all knotted up inside, certain that at some stage Roland Phillips would appear, if only to find out who was invading his property. But she was back in the car sitting beside Harris Quillian—and had seen nothing of her ex-employer. She started to feel better.

      ‘Thank you,’ she said simply as they left Almora Lodge behind.

      ‘My pleasure,’ he replied, and at some odd inflection in his tone, almost as if it had been a pleasure, Mallon found her eyes straying to his hands on the steering wheel. The knuckles on his right hand were very slightly reddened, she observed.

      ‘You saw Roland Phillips, didn’t you?’ she exclaimed as the explanation for that groan and thud suddenly jumped into her head. ‘It wasn’t very nice of him to mark your hand with his chin like that!’ The words broke from her before she could stop them.

      ‘Worth every crunch,’ Harris confirmed.

      Mallon turned sideways in her seat to look at him. Firm jaw, firm mouth, steady eyes; she was starting to quite like him. ‘You didn’t need much of an excuse to hit him,’ she commented, guessing that because, at heart, his sister wanted to get back with her husband, Harris had previously held back on the urge to set about Roland for the grief he had caused Faye. However, Roland’s behaviour today had given him the excuse he had been looking for.

      ‘True,’ Harris answered. ‘Unfortunately he was still half sozzled with drink, so I only had to hit him once.’ She had to smile; it felt good to smile. By the sound of it, Roland Phillips had gone down like a sack of coals.

      Harris carried her cases up the stairs when they arrived at Harcourt House. The two habitable bedrooms were side by side. He placed her cases in the room as yet without a bed, and showed her the other room.

      ‘Faye has seen to it that there’s plenty of bed linen, towels, that sort of thing, so I’ll leave that side of it to you.’ And, when Mallon stood hesitantly in the doorway, he went on casually, ‘I’ll arrange for locks to be put on both these bedroom doors tomorrow.’ Then, taking up what was obviously his overnight bag, he announced, ‘Now I should think about leaving.’

      Mallon began to suspect he had a heavy date that night. She wished him joy. She went downstairs with him, looking forward to the moment when he would be gone and she could change out of his clothes and into her own.

      ‘You’ve been very kind,’ she began as he accompanied her into the kitchen. ‘I don’t quite honestly know what I would have done if you hadn’t done a circle round and picked me up.’

      ‘You’re helping me too, remember,’ he said, and, taking out his wallet, he handed her a wad of notes. ‘In view of your past experience, I think it might be as well if you accepted your salary in advance rather than in arrears.’

      ‘I don’t want…’ she began to protest.

      ‘Don’t give me a hard time, Mallon. I’ve an idea you’re going to earn every penny—if only by keeping an army of builders supplied with tea and coffee.’ He smiled then, about the second time Mallon had seen him smile. This time it had the strangest effect of killing off all thought of protest. ‘While we’re on the subject of sustenance, fix yourself dinner from anything you fancy in the cupboards. It’s there for your use, so eat heartily.’ His glance slid over her slender figure, her curves obvious even in her baggy outfit. Mallon stilled, striving to hold down a feeling of panic. Then her large, deeply blue and troubled eyes met his steady grey ones, and he was no longer smiling. ‘You have a beautiful face, Mallon, and a superb figure.’ He brought out into the open that which she was panicking about. ‘And you’ve had one hell of a fright today. But, trust me, not every man you meet will be champing at the bit for your body.’

      She swallowed hard. This man, while sometimes being curt with her, sharp with her, had also been exceedingly kind. ‘As in—n-not in a million years?’

      He laughed then, and suddenly she relaxed and even smiled at him. She knew he had recalled without effort that he had answered ‘Not in a million years’ when she had earlier delayed leaving his car in fear that he too might have wicked intent. ‘Something like that,’ he answered.

      ‘Then go,’ she bade him, but, remembering he was now virtually her employer, ‘Sir,’ she added.

      And he, looking pleased that her spirit seemed to have returned, was unoffended. Handing her his business card, ‘Contact me if you need to,’ he instructed. ‘You’ll be all right on your own?’ he questioned seriously. ‘No fears?’

      ‘I’ll be fine,’ she answered. ‘Actually, I’m suddenly starting to feel better than I have in a long while.’

      Harris Quillian stared down at her, studying her. Then, nodding approvingly, he took up his overnight bag and his car keys. ‘I may be down on Friday,’ he said, and was gone.

      Her sleep was troubled by dark dreams that night. Mallon awoke a number of times, feeling threatened and insecure, and was awake again at four o’clock, although this time dawn was starting to break. And, with the light, she began to feel a little more secure.

      She lay wide awake looking round the high-ceilinged uncurtained room. As well as not having curtains, the room was as yet uncarpeted, but there was a large rug on the floor and, against one wall, a large oak wardrobe.

      Mallon could tell that, once the building work was completed, furniture and furnishings installed, Harcourt House would revert to what had once been its former glory. She liked big old houses—she had been brought up in one.

      Her eyes clouded over. She didn’t want to dwell on times past, but could not help but think back to her happy childhood, her loving and loved parents and the plans they had made for her future—all of which had turned to dust nine years ago.

      She had been thirteen when she and her mother were wondering whether to start dinner without waiting for Mallon’s father. He’d been a consultant surgeon and worked all hours, so meals had often been delayed. ‘We’ll start,’ her mother had just decreed, when there had been a ring at the doorbell. Their caller had been one of his colleagues, come to tell them that Cyrus Braithwaite had been in a car accident.

      The hospital had done everything they could to try and save him, but they must have known at the start from the extent of his injuries that they were going to lose him.

      Mallon had been totally shattered by her adored father’s death; her mother had been absolutely devastated and completely unable to cope. With the help of medication, her mother had got through day by day, but Mallon could not help but know that Evelyn Braithwaite