involved with...well...it was—’ she grimaced and blushed ‘—an interesting time all round. One of the guys she became involved with was a rich young minor aristocrat whose parents owned a massive property about ten miles away from here. It ended in tears but years later, out of the blue, she received this house in his will, much to everyone’s surprise. He’d been handed swathes of properties on his twenty-fifth birthday and he left this house to Mum, never thinking he’d die in a motorbike accident when he was still quite young.’
‘A tragedy with a fortunate outcome.’ Art considered the parallels between their respective parents and felt a tug of admiration that she had clearly successfully navigated a troubled background. He had too, naturally, but he was as cold as ice and just as malleable. He had been an observant, together teenager and a controlled, utterly cool-headed adult. He’d also had the advantage of money, which had always been there whatever the efforts of his father’s grasping ex-wives to deprive him of as much of it as they possibly could.
She, it would seem, was cut from the same cloth. When he thought of the sob stories some of his girlfriends had bored him with, he knew he’d somehow ended up summing up the fairer sex as hopeless when it came to dealing with anything that wasn’t sunshine and roses.
‘Guilty conscience,’ Rose responded wryly. ‘He really led my mother off the straight and narrow, and then dumped her for reasons that are just too long-winded to go into. Put it this way—’ she neatly closed her knife and fork and propped her chin in the palm of her hand ‘—he introduced her to the wonderful world of drugs and drink and then ditched her because, in the end, he needed the family money a lot more than he needed her. He also loved the family money more than he could ever have loved her.’
‘Charming,’ Art murmured, his keen dark eyes pinned to the stubborn set of her wide mouth.
‘Rich.’
‘Come again?’
‘He was rich so he figured he could do as he pleased and he did, not that it didn’t work out just fine in the end. Mum...came home and picked up the pieces and she was a darn sight better off without that guy in her life.’
‘Came home...? Picked up the pieces...?’
Rose flushed. ‘She disappeared for a while,’ she muttered, rising to clear the table.
‘How long a while?’
‘What does any of this have to do with the protest?’
‘Like I told you, I’m a keen observer of human nature. I enjoy knowing what makes people tick...what makes them who they are.’
‘I’m not a specimen on a petri dish,’ she said with more of her usual spirit, and Art burst out laughing.
‘You’re not,’ he concurred, ‘which doesn’t mean that I’m any the less curious. So talk to me. I don’t do domestic and I don’t do personal conversations but I’m sorely tempted to invite you to be the exception to my rule. My one-off, so to speak...’
TELL ME MORE...
Art bided his time. Curiosity battled with common sense. For some reason, over the next three days he kept wanting to return to the story of her past. His appetite to hear more had been whetted and it was all he could do to stamp down the urge to corner her and pry.
But that wasn’t going to do.
He hadn’t pursued the subject three days previously when his curiosity had been piqued because he had known that playing the waiting game was going to be a better bet.
He’d already gleaned one very important piece of information. She needed money. And while she might carry the banner of money can’t buy you happiness and the good things in life are free, Art knew that reality had very sharp teeth.
The house was falling down around her and whilst she did get some money from the tenants, enough to cover the essentials, from what she had told him in dribs and drabs she simply didn’t earn enough to keep things going.
And houses in this part of the world weren’t cheap. He knew because he’d strolled through the village, taking in all the great little details that made it such a perfect place for an upmarket housing development.
He wondered whether he could offer her something tantalising to call off the protest. He might have to dump the fellow protestor guise and reveal his true identity or he could simply contrive to act as a middleman to broker a deal. At any rate, he played with the idea of contributing something towards the community, something close to her heart that would make her think twice about continuing a line of action that was never going to pay dividends. Harold had been right when he’d painted his doomsday picture of a close-knit, hostile community determined to fend off the rich intruders with their giant four-wheel drive wagons and their sense of entitlement. They’d be wrong but since when did right and wrong enter into the picture when emotions were running high?
And Art needed peace. He needed the community onside. He needed to get past this first stage of development to reach the important second stage. When he thought of the benefits of the equestrian and craft centre he hoped to develop, for his stepbrother and the small intake of similar adults like his stepbrother, he knew just how vital it was for him to win this war with the backing of the people waving the placards. If he barrelled through their protest with marching boots they would turn on him and all his long-term plans would lie in ruins.
He’d met all the people who were protesting and the majority of them had kids who attended the local school.
He could appeal to them directly, imply that the heartless developers might be forced to build a new school.
His role, he had made sure to establish, was a fluid one. He had gone from protestor in situ to keen observer of human nature and general do-gooder who cared about the environment. He’d been vague about his actual background but had somehow managed to imply that he was more than just a drifter out to attach himself to a worthwhile cause. He’d used his imagination and he knew that a lot of the protestors were beginning to turn to him to answer some of their questions.
It irked him that even as he tried to find a solution to the situation and even as he mentally worked out the cost of digging into his pocket to effectively buy them off when there was, technically, no need for him to do so, he was still managing to feel bloody guilty at his charade.
He’d had no idea his conscience was so hyperactive and it got on his nerves.
Although...he had to admit a certain desire to impress the woman he was sharing a house with—fistfuls of cash would mean she could do the improvements she needed. He was cynical enough to suspect that if sufficient hard cash was put on the table she would not be able to resist because she was human and humans were all, without exception, susceptible to the lure of money.
Trouble was, he had to content himself with the painting job she had delegated to him.
‘You don’t have to,’ she had said two days previously, when she had led him to a part of the house that looked as though the cobwebs had set up camp the day after the final brick in the house had been laid. ‘You pay rent and, believe me, that’s sufficient help.’
But Art had felt obliged to make good on his vague assurances that he was capable of helping out.
Besides, painting the room was proving to be a valuable way of avoiding her because the more contact he had with her, the more interested he became in digging deeper, past the polite conversation they shared, usually in the company of a million other people. After that first night she had shared nothing more about herself. They had had no time alone together. Her house was apparently a magnet for every person in the village who had nothing better to do than drop by for a chat.
The night before, someone she had bumped into several weeks previously had shown up for an informal chat about a problem he was having with his new employer,