French Leave. PENNY JORDAN

Rubbish in the main, Gale had snorted, but the beds, heavy, old-fashioned affairs with wooden head-and foot-boards, had been worth keeping, although she had of course had to replace the mattresses.

      The sturdy, worn stairs led up from a room adjacent to the kitchen, the British equivalent of a comfortable family breakfast-room.

      Wearily, Livvy climbed them.

      ‘You can use any bedroom you like,’ Gale had told her. ‘Although the double ones at the front have the best views.’

      Livvy opened the first door she came to and switched on the light.

      She would sleep well tonight, she acknowledged half an hour later when she had drunk her tea and finished making up the bed. She was almost too tired for even the briefest of sluices under the feeble trickle of the antiquated shower, only habit compelling her to go through the motions of getting ready for bed.

      Ten minutes later, her body still glowing from the rough towelling she had given it, she curled up gratefully under her duvet.

      Tomorrow her holiday could begin properly. Her mouth watered as she contemplated the pleasure of eating croissants fresh from the boulangerie, washed down with rich, fragrant coffee.

      Mmm…it would make a delicious and welcome change from her normal rushed breakfast of a few mouthfuls of muesli eaten hurriedly between checking her diary, reading her post and generally getting ready for work.

      Livvy could hear a noise. A car door slamming. She sat up groggily in bed frowning as she glanced at her watch. It was just gone nine. She had slept for longer than she had intended.

      As she climbed out of bed and reach for her cotton wrap, she wondered who her unexpected visitor was.

      She guessed that it would probably be the farmer from whom Gale and George had bought the house. Gale had described him to her, fifty-odd, short and gnarled, very good at playing dumb when he chose and even, ridiculously, trying to pretend at times that he could not understand Gale’s excellently fluent French, and with the financial acumen that many a finance director would envy.

      Livvy smiled to herself now, remembering how she had guessed from the acid note of chagrin in Gale’s voice that for once her cousin had met her match.

      It was a pity she had overslept; if the Dordogne was anything like the other parts of rural France she had previously visited its inhabitants would operate a code of behaviour almost Victorian in its formality. Appearing to greet a neighbour a nine o’clock in the morning not dressed, her hair tousled and still half asleep, would doubtless reinforce the French belief in their superiority as a race.

      She was halfway across the kitchen when she heard someone turning a key in the door lock.

      Frowning, she stood still. It made sense that the farmer should have a key so that he could keep a check on the property while it was empty, but Gale had told her that she was going to warn him to expect her, and, even though she had parked her car out of sight in one of the outbuildings, surely he might at least have knocked first.

      The door opened and Livvy froze in shocked disbelief.

      It couldn’t be, but it was: the man who had just let himself into the farmhouse was the same man she had seen at the auberge last night, the same man who had been so rude to her in the car park, the same man who had so contemptuously ignored her plight later.

      As she stared into his cold, arrogantly handsome face and felt the shock of the invisible force-field which seemed to surround him, she was temporarily completely lost for words.

      Distantly her mind registered the fact that, for some odd reason, her body was reacting to his presence in the most alarming and dangerous way.

      Beneath her terry robe and the thin cotton T-shirt she had slept in, her nipples were peaking with unfamiliar and confusing intensity, a shock-wave of sensation exploding inside her.

      Quickly, she pulled her robe protectively closer to her body. Her heart was beating fast and heavily; she felt confused and powerless, plunged into a situation which both alarmed and excited her.

      What was he doing here? How had he found her? Why had he followed her?

      Giddily her thoughts swirled dizzily through her brain, temporarily robbing her of her normal, calm control, and then chillingly she realised how dangerous the situation was, how vulnerable she was.

      She was alone here, vulnerable and unprotected, and for all his apparent wealth and respectability he could…he might…

      Firmly she swallowed back the fear and confronted him.

      ‘Never allow yourself to be intimidated or to show fear. Never let anyone else take control from you,’ she and her fellow students had been told before they went into teaching, and that advice applied just as much to this situation as it did to facing a class of pupils.

      Forcing her tense throat muscles to relax, she demanded huskily, ‘What are you doing here…why have you followed me? If you don’t leave immediately, I shall call the police.’

      CHAPTER THREE

      ‘FOLLOWED YOU?’

      The harsh derision in his voice was as abrasive as sandpaper against vulnerable flesh, making Livvy wince and tense.

      ‘You’ve got some nerve. If anyone will be calling the police it will be me. People like you who break into private property and squat…You’ve no right…’

      Break in! Squat! Livvy was almost too angry to speak. How dared he accuse her?

      ‘You’re the one who has no right to be here,’ she interrupted him furiously. ‘Not me. This house belongs to my cousin and her husband and it was Gale who invited me to spend the summer here, and…’

      ‘You’re Gale’s cousin?’

      Against her will, Livvy found herself responding to the sharp authority of his tone, inclining her head in curt agreement as he cut across her angry speech. A persistent and unignorable warning bell was beginning to ring in her brain. ‘You know Gale and George?’ she demanded warily, trusting its authenticity.

      ‘Yes,’ came the terse response. ‘What do you mean, Gale invited you to spend the summer here? George told me the house would be empty.’

      Livvy swallowed.

      ‘You will tell George that I’m going to be there, won’t you?’ she had asked her cousin.

      ‘Of course I will,’ Gale had reassured her. ‘Once he can bring himself to spare us some of his precious time.’

      As she looked into the face of the man watching her, the stark, cold realisation of why he was here suddenly struck her.

      ‘George wanted to sell the farmhouse,’ Gale had told her. Then Livvy had taken Gale’s complaints about her husband with a pinch of salt, genuinely believing that George would never behave in such an underhand manner, but this man’s presence here confirmed everything Gale had told her.

      He looked the type who would take advantage of someone else’s problems for his own pecuniary gain, she decided cynically.

      Tilting her chin, she told him sweetly, ‘Well, now you can see that it isn’t, can’t you? If you want to look round I can’t stop you, but obviously I’d like you to leave as soon as possible…’

      ‘Me, leave…? My arrangement with George was that I would stay here for a while…’

      ‘Surely it doesn’t take long for you to decide whether or not you want to buy the place?’ she asked derisively. He certainly didn’t look the indecisive type, far from it.

      ‘To buy it?’ He was frowning at her now, but Livvy wasn’t deceived.

      ‘Yes, and no doubt you’re hoping to get it at less than the market value,’ she added scathingly, her lip curling. ‘I’ve met men like you before, men who are always