every time Beth had punched the numbers into her own telephone she had been met with a blank silence, an emptiness humming along the wire. Even if the factory had been closed for the Czech Republic version of a Bank Holiday, the telephone would still have rung.
The most horrible suspicion, the most awful possibility, was beginning to edge its way into Beth’s thoughts.
‘Don’t be taken in by what you’ve been shown,’ Alex Andrews had warned her. ‘Some gypsies are thought to be used as pawns in organised crime. Their aim is to sell non-existent goods to gullible foreign tourists in order to bring into the organisation foreign currency.’
‘I don’t believe you. You’re just trying to frighten me,’ Beth had told him furiously. ‘To frighten me and to make sure that I give my order to your cousins,’ she had added sharply. ‘That’s what all this is really about, isn’t it? Telling me you’ve fallen in love with me…claiming to care about me…I would be gullible if I had fallen for your lies, Alex…’
Beth didn’t want to remember Alex’s reaction to her accusations. She didn’t want to remember anything about Alex Andrews at all. She wasn’t going to allow herself to remember anything about him.
No? Then how come she had dreamed about him virtually every night since her return from the Czech Republic? a small inner voice taunted her.
She had dreamed about him simply out of the relief of knowing she had stood by her own promises to herself and not fallen for his lies, his claims to love her, Beth told her unwanted internal critic crossly.
She looked at her watch. It was almost four o’clock. No point in trying the Czech suppliers again today. Instead she would repack her incorrect order.
Dee, their landlady for the shop and the comfortable accommodation that went with it, who had now become a good friend, had invited her over for supper this evening.
Dispiritedly she started to repack the stemware, shuddering a little as she did so. The crystal was more suitable for jam jars than stemware, Beth decided with a grimace of distaste.
‘Haven’t I heard,’ Dee had queried gently a few weeks ago, ‘that some of the processes through which their china and glassware are made are a little crude when compared to ours…?’
‘At the lower end of the market perhaps they are,’ Beth had defended. ‘But this factory I found originally actually made things for the Royal House of Russia. The sales director showed me the most exquisite pieces of a dinner service they’d had made for one of the Romanian Princes. It reminded me very much of a Sèvres service, and the translucency of the china was quite breathtaking. The Czech people are very proud of their tradition of making high-quality crystal,’ Beth had added.
She had Alex Andrews to thank for that little piece of information. It had been something he had thrown furiously at her when she had accused him of trying to persuade her to buy his cousins’ goods, and the cause of yet another quarrel between them.
Beth had never met anyone who infuriated her as much as he had done. He had brought out in her a streak of anger and passion she had never previously known she possessed.
Anger and passion. Two very dangerous emotions.
Quickly Beth got back to repacking the open crates. Remember, she told herself sternly, you aren’t going to think about him. Or about what…what happened…
To her chagrin, Beth could feel her face starting to heat and then burn.
‘God, but you’re wonderful. So sweet and gentle on the outside and so hot and wild in private, so very hot and wild…’
Furious with herself, Beth jumped up.
‘You weren’t going to think about him,’ she told herself fiercely. ‘You aren’t going to think about him.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘MORE coffee, Beth…?’
‘Mmm…’
‘You seem rather preoccupied. Is anything wrong?’ Dee asked Beth in concern as she put down the coffee pot she had been holding.
They had finished eating and were now sitting in Dee’s sitting room, where several furnishing and decorating catalogues were spread open around them. Dee was planning to redecorate the room, and had been asking Beth for her opinion of the choices she had made.
‘No. No…I like the cream brocade very much,’ Beth told Dee quickly. ‘And if you opt for the cream carpet as well, that will allow you to bring in some richer, stronger colours in the form of cushions and throws…’
‘Yes, that was what I was thinking. I’ve seen a wonderful fabric that I’ve really fallen for, and I’ve managed to track down the manufacturer, but it’s a very small company. They’ve told me that they can only accept my order if I pay for it up front, and of course I’m reluctant to do that, just in case they can’t or don’t deliver.
‘I’ve asked my bank to run a financial check on them and let me have the results. It will be a pity if the report isn’t favourable. The fabric is wonderful, and I’ve really set my heart on it. But of course one has to be cautious in these matters, as no doubt you know.
‘You must have really been keeping your fingers crossed in Prague whilst you waited for your bank to verify that the Czech company was financially sound enough for you to do business with.’
‘Er…yes. Yes, I was…’
Beth took a quick gulp of her coffee.
What would Dee say if Beth were to admit to her that she had done no such thing, that she had quite simply been so excited at the thought of selling the wonderful stemware she had seen that every principle of financial caution she had ever learnt had flown right out of her head?
‘Kelly rang me today. She was telling me that she and Brough are hoping to make an extended trip to Singapore and Australia…’
‘Mmm…they are,’ Beth agreed.
She ought to have asked her bank to make proper enquiries over the Czech factory. She knew that, of course. Not just to ensure that they were financially sound, but also to find out how good they were at meeting their order dates. She could even remember her bank manager advising that she do so when she had telephoned him to ask him for extra credit facilities. And no doubt if he hadn’t been on the point of departing for his annual leave on the very afternoon she had rung he would have made sure that she had done so.
But he had and she hadn’t and the small, nagging little seed of doubt planted earlier by her inability to make telephone or fax contact with the factory was now throwing out shoots and roots of increasingly strong suspicion and dread with frightening speed.
‘How will you manage whilst Kelly’s away? You’ll have to get someone in part-time to help you…’
‘Yes. Yes, I shall,’ Beth agreed distractedly, wondering half hysterically what on earth Dee would say if she admitted to her that, if her worst fears were confirmed and her incorrect order had not been a mistake but a deliberate and cynical ploy to take advantage of her there was no way she would need any extra sales staff because, quite simply, there would be virtually nothing in the shop to sell.
Another fear sprang into Beth’s thoughts. If she had nothing to sell then how was she going to pay her rent on the shop and the living accommodation above it?
She had absolutely nothing to fall back on, not now that she had over-extended herself so dangerously to purchase the Czech glass.
Her parents would always help her out, she knew that, and so, too, she suspected, would Anna, her godmother. But how could she go to any of them and admit how foolish she had been?
No, she had got herself into this mess, and somehow she would get herself out of it.
And her first step in doing that was to locate her supplier and insist that the factory take back her incorrect order and supply her with the goods