She didn’t know what to expect.
Overweight, overfed, overpaid and over-confident. Someone at the height of his career, with all the trappings that an expensive top job afforded. Angie had given nothing away and wouldn’t have. She was gay and paid not a scrap of attention to what members of the opposite sex looked like.
Rose was only twenty-eight herself but the young people who had been sent to argue the case had seemed so much younger than her.
She pushed open the kitchen door and then stood for a few moments in the doorway.
The man was standing with his back to her, staring out at the garden, which flowed seamlessly into open land, the only boundary between private and public being a strip of trees and a dishevelled hedge of sorts.
He was tall. Very tall. She was five eleven and she guessed that he would be somewhere in the region of six three.
And, from what she was seeing, he was well built. Muscular. Broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist and legs that moulded perfectly to the faded jeans he was wearing.
What sort of lawyer was this?
Confused, Rose cleared her throat to give notice of her presence and the man turned around slowly.
‘My secretary didn’t tell me your name, Mr...’
‘Frank.’ The stranger took his time as he walked towards her, which annoyed Rose because this was her house and her kitchen and yet the man seemed to dominate the space and own it in a way she didn’t care for.
‘Well, Mr Frank. You’re here about the land, I gather. If your company thinks that this ploy is going to work, then I hate to disappoint you but it won’t.’
Alarmed because he had somehow managed to close the distance between them and was standing just a little too close for comfort, Rose sidestepped him to the kettle, only offering him something to drink seemingly as an afterthought.
‘You can sit,’ she said crisply. ‘Just shove some of the papers out of the way.’
‘What ploy?’
Rose watched as he looked at the placards in the making on the kitchen table, head politely inclined. After some consideration, he held up one and examined it in reflective silence before returning it to its original position on the table.
‘What ploy?’ he repeated.
‘The lawyer-in-jeans ploy,’ Rose said succinctly. She shot him a look of pure disdain, but only just managed to pull it off because the man was just so...so...crazily good-looking that her nervous system felt as though it had been put through a spin cycle and was all over the place.
He’d sat down but not in a lawyer-like manner, which was also annoying. He’d angled the pine chair, one of ten around the long rectangular table, and was sprawled in it, his long legs stretched right out in front of him, one ankle over the other. He looked effortlessly elegant and incredibly cool in his weathered jeans and faded polo shirt. Everything clung in a way that made her think that the entire outfit had been especially designed with him in mind.
She pushed the coffee over to him. He looked just the kind of guy to take his coffee black, no sugar.
‘Does your company think that they can send someone who’s dressed down for the day in the hope that we might just soften our stance? Maybe be deluded into thinking that he’s not the stuffed shirt lawyer that he actually is?’ She narrowed her eyes and tried and failed to imagine him as a stuffed shirt lawyer.
‘Ah...’ Mr Frank murmured. ‘That ploy.’
‘Yes. That ploy. Well, it won’t work. My team and I are committed to the cause and you can tell your employers that we intend to fight this abhorrent and unnecessary development with every ounce of breath in us.’
‘You overestimate my qualifications,’ Mr Frank said smoothly, sipping the coffee. ‘Excellent coffee, by the way. I’m no lawyer. But were I to be one, then I would try very hard not to be a stuffed shirt one.’
‘Not a lawyer? Then who the heck are you? Angie said that you were here about the land.’
‘Angie being the girl with the spiky hair and the nose ring?’
‘That’s correct. She also happens to be an extremely efficient secretary and a whizz at IT.’
‘Well, she was certainly right in one respect. I am here about the land. Here to join the noble cause.’
* * *
Art’s plan had been simple. It had come to him in a blinding flash shortly after Harold had informed him that money wasn’t going to make the problem of squatters on his land go away.
If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.
Naturally he’d known what to expect but somehow, in the flesh, the woman staring at him through narrowed eyes wasn’t quite the hippy he had originally imagined.
He couldn’t put his finger on what was different and then, in the space of a handful of seconds, decided that it was a case of imagination playing tricks because she was certainly dressed in just the sort of attire he’d expected. Some sort of loose trousers in an assortment of clashing colours. Practical, given the hot weather, but, in all other respects, frankly appalling. A shapeless green vest-like top and a pair of sandals that, like the trousers, were practical but ticked absolutely no other boxes as far as he was concerned.
Her hair seemed to be staging a full-scale revolt against its half-hearted restraints. It was very curly and strands of it waved around her cheeks.
But the woman emanated presence and that was something he couldn’t deny.
She wasn’t beautiful, not in the conventional sense of the word, but she was incredibly arresting and for a few seconds Art found himself in the novel situation of temporarily forgetting why he was sitting here in a kitchen that looked as though a bomb had recently been detonated in it.
And then it all came back. He would join the band of merry protestors. He would get to know the woman. He would convince her from the position of insider that she was fighting a losing battle.
He would bring her round to his way of thinking, which was simply a matter of bringing her round to common sense, because she was never going to win this war.
But strong-arm tactics weren’t going to work because, as Harold had made perfectly clear, storming in and bludgeoning the opposition would be catastrophic in a community as tightly knit as this one clearly was.
He was simply going to persuade her into seeing his point of view and the best and only way he could do that would be from the inside, from the position of one of them. From the advantageous position of trust.
Art didn’t need opposition. He needed to butter up the unruly mob because he had long-term plans for the land—plans that included sheltered accommodation for his autistic stepbrother, to whom he was deeply attached.
He hadn’t gone straight to the site though, choosing instead to make himself known to the woman standing firmly between him and his plans. He was good with women. Women liked him. Quite a few positively adored him. And there weren’t many who didn’t fall for his charm. Art wasn’t vain but he was realistic, so why not use that charm to work its magic on this recalcitrant woman?
If that failed to do the trick then of course he would have to go back to the drawing board, but it was worth a shot.
To this end, he had taken his unprecedented leave of absence. A few days to sort out urgent business that wouldn’t happily sit on the back burner and now here he was.
He was sporting the beginnings of a beard, was letting his hair grow, and the sharp handmade suits had ceded to the faded jeans and a black polo shirt.
‘Really?’ Rose said with a certain amount of cynicism.
‘Indeed.