“Trust you?” Sebastian’s jaw muscles rippled. “I don’t even know your frickin’ name.”
“Seriously, I’ll be gone now. You don’t need to know my name or anything else about me.”
“I do when I tell the hotel manager.” His grip tightened as he marched her toward the reception desk. “And I’m sure the police would be very interested to know too.”
Shit!“But you’ll never see me again. Just tell everyone Cassie had some emergency or something and had to leave the country.” Helen yanked her hand away from him. Out the corner of her eye, on the rain-soaked street, she caught a flash of red.Tom’s car!“Look, there’s Grice!”
Falling for the distraction, Sebastian glanced over his shoulder. Helen darted back into the restaurant. She narrowly missed a waiter pushing a trolley of food, then slipped past diners. Squeezing between tables, Helen glanced back. Sebastian’s path had been blocked by the trolley.
But not for long.
He was still coming for her, even though his height and build, and his compulsion to be sickly charming to everyone he passed were slowing him down. Rounding the last table, Helen shot toward the exit.
And crashed into a waiter carrying plates of food.
Helen yelped as hot Chinese soup seeped through her blouse and scalded her skin. Every diner was staring at her and, from across the room, so was Sebastian.
He sneered at her then slipped away in the opposite direction, leaving Helen to drown in her own shame.
The waiter dabbed at her wet clothes, wafting ginger and garlic toward her nostrils. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t worry. It was my fault.”
It’s always my bloody fault.Helen ran out into the lashing rain, threw herself inside Tom’s car and firmly closed the door, shutting out the storm, the humiliation, and all traces of Sebastian Clarke from her life.
Her deep exhales pierced the car’s muffled interior, the steadytick-tick-tickof the indicators at odds with the racing thud-thud-thud of her heart. Wipers whipped rain methodically away from the windscreen as the engine fanned warm air onto her wet legs.
Tom arched an eyebrow. “Is there a reason you’re covered in noodles?”
“Yes, actually. There is.” Helen picked a pea out of her cleavage. “But somehow, I don’t think even you will believe me.”
The smell of rain and mud clung to the evening air as Helen watched Tom’s car disappear up the quiet, leafy lane that led to his house in the village. Despite her feet killing her, Helen had insisted he drop her off at the top of the orchards so she could walk the last half a mile home. The forty-minute drive listening to Tom’s lectures and concern had done little to lighten her mood, and she needed to shake off the disasters of the city before carrying them into the sanctuary of her cottage.
She slipped off her sandals and swished her sore toes in a puddle, then headed barefoot toward the apple orchards, through the Pendlebury Estate’s upper field. It was dark for a late spring evening. The clouds that had poured over the city now lingered over the surrounding countryside, making it feel much later than six fifteen. Helen had to tend to the flock of chickens she kept in her garden as well as upload Alexa’s new range of sexy lingerie, but it could all wait half an hour while she readjusted and shook off the miseries of the day.
In the field, swallows screeched and swooped above her, and blackbirds sang sweetly in the hedgerows. Helen filled her lungs with fresh country air then blew it all out, still not believing what had happened at the hotel.
Liz, who’d been on a shift break, had texted her frantically while Tom had been going on and on about qualifications and aproper job.
WTF happened? Did he hit on you? Ask you out? What’s he like? I hear he’s a real flirt but who cares? He’s hot.
Helen had denied everything, dismissing posing for the photo as just a bit of fun, then told Liz her phone’s battery was dying and that she’d call her later.
There’d been nothing flirty about Sebastian Clarke. He’d been all business and rather sweet with it, especially when he’d read his silly rules from his silly little notebook. He’d come across as a pretty decent guy. Normal, really. Liked and respected by his well-regarded boss and his boss’s family.
Guilt gnawed again. How would Sebastian explain Cassie’s absence to Michael Adams? And that scary lady, Brenda? And what would he say to that journalist at the press call tomorrow if he asked about his girlfriend?
Helen winced.
The judge should’ve locked her up this morning, not let her loose to ruin other people’s careers—but surely, the real Cassie should’ve turned up by now. Chances were that Sebastian was, most probably right this very minute, reading out his rules to her, having spun some bullshit to his boss to explain Cassie’s new appearance.
Okay, Helen couldn’t imagine how anyone would be able to explain that last bit. By the time she’d walked to the other end of the field and reached the fence, she accepted that she’d truly, single-handedly messed up Sebastian’s secret plan.
Helen climbed over the fence, but her skirt was too restrictive. She stumbled and landed smack on her backside.Excellent. Just what she deserved. Could today get any more fantastic?
Her answer came with the first spots of rain. The damp from the long grass had already seeped through to her underwear, and, by the time she reached the orchards, she was soaked through. Her hair stuck to her wet face as she ran along the neat rows of apple trees, pausing only briefly to glance through the hedgerows at Pendlebury Manor in the distance. The usual pang that it—and the estate her cottage stood on—would soon be sold curdled her stomach, but she pushed on, hating to think that her time living here could soon come to an end.
Almost home, Helen’s feet were cold, but the rain had eased off. She opened the gate at the bottom of the garden and breathed a sigh of relief.
