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She was coming through the sitting room when she heard the bump of the cat flap opening and closing. Then she heard the sound of Monty giving a weird-sounding miaow. Every hair on Kat’s scalp fizzed at the roots. Every knob of her spine froze. She knew what that was. That was a victory miaow. The sort of miaow a cat makes when it lands its prey and was about to show it off to its owners.
But Kat wasn’t his owner. She didn’t want to see his handiwork. No way. This was why she didn’t own a cat. This was why she didn’t even like cats. They brought in stuff, horrible stuff, like dead birds and...and...she couldn’t even think the word without wanting to jump on a chair and scream. Dread as cold as the snow falling outside chugged through her veins. A hedgehog climbed up her windpipe until she couldn’t take a breath. Fear tightened her chest, making her heart go into arrhythmia so bad any decent cardiologist would have rushed for a defibrillator.
Her eyes were glued to the door of the sitting room. It was like a scene in a Friday night fright film. She was frozen with primal fear, unable to move a step forward or a step back. Her feet were nailed to the floor. Monty made that muffled miaow again from just outside the sitting room, the miaow that sounded like he had his mouth full of...something.
No. No. No. Kat chanted manically. This couldn’t be happening. Not to her. Not on her first night in this lovely house. Lovely houses like this didn’t have dreadful, ghastly, horrid, unmentionable creatures inside them...
It was so quiet she could hear each soft pad of Monty’s paws on the carpet as he came round the door into the sitting room. Puft. Puft. Puft. Puft. Her eyes widened in horror when she saw what was dangling from his mouth. ‘Eeeeeek!’ She screamed so loudly she was vaguely aware she might shatter the chandeliers or windows. Or wake the neighbours. In France.
But then the stupid cat let the thing go. And it wasn’t dead! It streaked across the floor right next to Kat’s feet and disappeared under one of the sofas.
Kat bolted from the room so fast she could have qualified for the Olympics. She snapped the door shut behind her and fled to the front door, barely stopping long enough to grab her coat from the coat stand. She didn’t bother with gloves—she would never have been able to get them on her shaking hands. She had only taken one flying step out of the Carstairses’ house when she came face to face with Flynn, who was walking a weird-looking dog.
He frowned and steadied her with a hand on her arm. ‘Are you all right? I heard you screaming and—’
Kat pointed back at the house with a quaking finger. ‘In—in there... M-Monty brought in a...a...’
‘A what?’
‘I can’t say it,’ she said. ‘Please will you get rid of it for me? Please? I’ll never be able to sleep knowing it’s in there.’
‘What’s in there?’
Kat absolutely never cried. Not unless it was written in the script. Then she could do it, no problem. But fear colliding with relief that someone had come to her rescue made her want to throw herself on Flynn’s chest and howl like a febrile teething baby. She bit her bottom lip, sure she was going to bite right through before she could stop it trembling. ‘I—I have this thing...a phobia... I know it’s silly but I—I just can’t help it.’
He put his gloved hand on her shoulder. Even though there were layers of fabric between his skin and hers, she felt something warm and electric go right through her body from the top of her shoulder to the balls of her feet. ‘Did Monty bring in a mouse?’
Kat squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands over her ears. ‘Don’t say that word!’
His hand slipped down from her shoulder to take her bare hands in his gloved ones. ‘Look at me, Kat.’
Kat looked. But he wasn’t laughing at her. His expression was serious and concerned. ‘It got away from Monty,’ she said, almost wailing like a little kid. Waa-waa-waa. ‘It—it went under the sofa.’
He gave her freezing hands a warm squeeze. ‘I’ll deal with it, or at least Cricket and I will.’
‘Cricket?’
The little dog at Flynn’s feet yapped and spun around on his back legs as if on cue. He was not the sort of dog she was expecting someone like Flynn to own. She had expected some classy, Crufts-standard, purebred Malamute, a regal Great Dane or a velvet-smooth German pointer. Cricket wasn’t any bigger than a child’s football, was of indeterminate breed and looked like something out of a science fiction movie. His wiry coat was a caramel brown with little flecks of white that stood up at odd angles like they had been stuck on as an afterthought. He had one ear that stood up and one that flopped down, a thin, wiry tail that curled like a question mark over his back and a lower jaw that stuck out a few millimetres like a drawer that hadn’t been shut properly.
‘My right-hand man,’ Flynn said. ‘An expert at rodent-ectomies.’
Kat was almost limp with relief. ‘I’d be ever so grateful.’
‘Do you want to wait at my house while we get the business end of things sorted?’
Another groundswell of relief nearly knocked her off her feet, as if all her bones had been taken out of her body. ‘You wouldn’t mind?’
He smiled and looped her arm through one of his. ‘Come this way.’
Kat was beyond worrying about going all damsel-in-distress with him. She was in distress. She would have happily sat in an axe murderer’s house rather than face that...that creature under the sofa.
Besides, it was a perfect opportunity to have a look around Flynn’s house while he wasn’t there.
He unlocked the door and led her inside, telling her to make herself comfortable and that he’d be back soon. Cricket bounced at Flynn’s feet as if he knew he was in for some blood sport. Eeeww.
Once they were gone Kat had a peep around. It was much the same layout as the Carstairses’ house next door but, while the Carstairses’ was a family home with loads of photos and family memorabilia, there was nothing to show Flynn’s family of origin. There wasn’t a single photo anywhere. There were some quite lovely works of art, however. And some rather gorgeous pieces of antique furniture that suggested he was a bit of a traditionalist, rather than a man with strictly modern taste.
Kat found his study next door to the sitting room, which had a beautiful cedar desk and leather Chesterfield chair. There was a black Chesterfield sofa set in front of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The titles went from thick law tomes to the classics and history, with a smattering of modern titles, mostly crime and thrillers.
She went back into the sitting room and sat down at the grand piano that was set to one side of the room near the windows. She put her fingers to the keys, but all she could tinkle out was a nursery rhyme or two—but not Three Blind Unmentionables. Not exactly Royal Albert Hall standard, she thought with an embittered pang at what she could have had if her father had provided for her during her childhood. No doubt the Ravensdale siblings were all accomplished musicians. They had gone to fabulous schools and been taken on wonderful holidays with no expense spared.
What had she had?
A big, fat nothing. Which was why it was so hard to get established now. She was years behind her peers. She hadn’t had acting lessons until recently because she couldn’t afford them. She still couldn’t afford a voice coach. A Scottish accent was fine if that was what a play called for. But she needed to be versatile, and that came with training, and training was hideously expensive—at least, the good quality stuff was. She could join some amateur group but she didn’t want to be stuck as an extra in some unknown play in some way-out suburb’s community hall.
She wanted to be at the West End in London.
It had been her goal since she was a kid.
It wasn’t about the fame. Kat didn’t give a toss for the fame. It was about the acting. It had always been about the acting, of getting into character in real time. About being onstage. About being in that electric atmosphere of being engaged with a live audience, seeing their reactions, hearing them gasp in shock, laugh in amusement or cry with heartfelt emotion. It wasn’t the same, acting on a film set. The sequences were shot out of order. The camera had to come to you rather than onstage when you had to project your character to the audience.
That was what she loved. What she lived for, dreamed of, hungered after like a drug.
But there was another side to acting she found therapeutic. Cathartic, even. Stepping into a role was the chance to step away from her background. Her hurt. Her pain. Her shame.
The sound of Flynn’s return made Kat scoot away from the piano and sit on one of the plush sofas, hugging a scatter cushion as if she had been there for the last half-hour.
Cricket came in with a panting smile, looking up at his master as if to say, ‘Aren’t I clever?’
‘All sorted,’ Flynn said.
Kat glanced at the dog’s mouth to see if there was any trace of the murderous act that had gone on next door. ‘Is it dead?’ she asked, looking back at Flynn.
‘Your visitor has gone to the great, big cheese shop in the sky.’
Her shoulders went down in relief. ‘I can’t thank you enough.’
Flynn looked at her for a beat. ‘There is one way.’
Kat sprang to her feet. ‘No. No way. You can’t blackmail me into seeing my father. Anyway, you said the wretched thing was dead. You can’t bring it back to life to twist my arm.’
‘It was worth a try, I thought.’ He moved over to a drinks cabinet. ‘Fancy a drink to settle your nerves?’
She wanted to say no but somehow found herself saying yes. ‘Just a wee one.’
He handed her a Scotch whisky. ‘From the home country.’
Kat took the glass from him, touching him for the second time that evening, but this time skin to skin. Something tight unfurled in her belly. ‘Do you live here alone?’ she asked to disguise her reaction to him.
‘Yes.’
‘No current girlfriend?’
His dark eyes glinted. ‘I’m currently in the process of recruiting.’
Kat tried not to look at his mouth but it felt like an industrial-strength magnet was pulling her gaze to that stubble-surrounded sensual curve. ‘How’s that working out for you?’
‘I have high hopes of filling the vacancy soon.’
‘What are your criteria?’ She gave him a pert look. ‘Breathing with a pulse?’
Amusement shone in his gaze. ‘I’m a little more selective than that. How about you?’
‘What about me?’
‘Are you dating anyone?’
Kat raised one of her brows in an arc. ‘I thought you knew everything there was to know about me.’
‘Not quite everything,’ he said. ‘But I know you’ve been single for a couple of months.’
How did he know? Or did he think no one would want to date her? Wasn’t she up to his well-heeled standards? What was it about her that made him think she had ‘single’ written all over her? Surely he couldn’t tell she hadn’t had sex in ages. That was just plain impossible. No one could tell that... Could they? Or had he somehow found out about that stupid affair with Charles—the man who had conveniently forgotten to mention he had a wife—which had kicked off her celibacy pact? ‘You know?’ she said. ‘How?’
He gave a light shrug of one of his shoulders. ‘Just a feeling.’
‘I thought lawyers relied on evidence, not feelings.’
His mouth slanted again. ‘Sometimes a bit of gut instinct doesn’t go astray.’
Kat moved her gaze out of reach of his assessing one. ‘Your place looks like it’s much the same layout as next door. Have you lived here long?’
‘Seven years,’ he said. ‘I have another place in the country.’
Kat mentally rolled her eyes. ‘Only one?’
He gave a low, deep chuckle that did strange things to the base of her spine, making it go all loose and wobbly. ‘I like collecting things. Property is one of them.’
‘Does it make you happy, having all that disgusting wealth to throw around?’
Something at the back of his gaze shifted. ‘It’s satisfying to have something that no one can take away.’
‘Did you grow up with money?’
‘My parents weren’t wealthy by any means but they were comfortable.’
Kat looked at the gorgeous artwork hanging on the walls. None of them were prints. All were originals. One of them was surely a Picasso? ‘They must be very proud of what you’ve achieved.’
He didn’t answer for a moment. ‘They enjoy the benefits of my success.’
She turned to look at him, wondering what was behind his cryptic response. ‘Are you close to them?’
‘I live my life. They live theirs.’
His expression had a boxed-up look about it. What was it about his family that made him so guarded? ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’ she asked.
‘Two younger brothers.’
‘What do they do?’
‘Felix is a plumber and Fergus is a builder, like my father in Manchester,’ he said. ‘My mother stopped work when I came along. But now she does the bookwork and accounts for my father and brothers. She’s made quite a career of it.’
Kat was surprised to hear he was originally from Manchester. He had no trace of the regional accent at all. But then, maybe he could afford a voice coach. ‘How long have you lived in London?’
‘Since I was ten,’ he said. ‘I won a scholarship to the same school the Ravensdale twins went to. I ended up spending more time at school than with my family.’
‘Neither of your brothers got scholarships?’
‘No.’
‘Were they jealous?’
His mouth twisted. ‘They’re not the academic type. They both left school as soon as they could get an apprenticeship.’
‘You don’t sound like you have much in common with them.’
‘I don’t.’
Kat shifted her lips from side to side, wondering why he was so different from the rest of his family. His father and younger brothers were tradesmen and yet he was one of London’s top lawyers, known for his incisive mind and clever wit. Had his stellar career trajectory made him an alien to his family? Had his educational opportunities created a chasm between him and his family that could not be bridged? Or was he just one of those people who didn’t have time for family—an unsentimental man who wanted to make his own way in the world without the ties of blood?
There were no photos of his family around that she could see. Unlike the Carstairses’ house next door, where just about every surface was covered in sentimental shots of happy family life. Flynn’s house was more like a showcase house out of a home and lifestyle magazine. The luxurious decor spoke of unlimited wealth, yet it wasn’t overdone. There was a sophisticated element to the placement of every piece of antique furniture, hand-woven carpet and the beautifully crafted soft furnishings.
She wasn’t the sort of girl to get her head turned by a good-looking man. But something about Flynn made her senses go a little crazy. She was aware of him in a way she had never been aware of another man. She felt his proximity like a radar signal in her body. Every nerve was registering exactly where he was in relation to her. Even that first day, when he had come to her café and introduced himself, her body had responded with a shockwave of visceral energy. When his gaze met hers that first time she had felt a lightning-bolt reaction, like she was being zapped with a stun gun. She had felt it humming through her blood, an electric buzz that centred deep in her core. He had a sensual power about him way beyond any other man she had encountered before.
The thought of him touching her again was strangely exciting. He had nice hands, broad and square with long fingers and neat nails. He had a sprinkling of dark hair over the back of them that came from beneath the cuffs of his cashmere sweater, which made her imagination go wild, wondering where else it was sprinkled over the rest of his body. Would he be one of those men who man-scaped? Or would he be au naturel?
Cricket came and sat in front of her with a beseeching look on his face. Kat bent down and ruffled his funny little ears. ‘How long have you had this adorable little guy?’
‘I got him at Christmas.’
Kat looked up at Flynn. ‘Where did you get him? Is he a rescue dog?’
Again he seemed to hesitate before he answered. ‘You could say that.’
Kat frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
He put his glass down but she noticed he hadn’t drunk more than a sip or two. ‘My mother has this habit of collecting cute strays but when they’re no longer cute she gets rid of them.’
Kat heard the faint trace of bitterness in his tone. Was there more to the dog story than he was saying? Did it have something to do with his childhood? His relationship with his mother? His family? ‘I always wanted a dog but we could never afford one while I was growing up,’ she said. ‘And we always lived in flats.’
‘You could have one now, couldn’t you?’
She straightened and glanced at him where he was leaning against the piano. ‘I don’t have the sort of lifestyle to own a dog. I move around a lot in search of acting work.’
‘Anything on the horizon for you?’
Kat wasn’t sure she wanted to tell him too much in case he told Richard Ravensdale. She wanted that part in the play on her own acting merit, not because of her famous father’s influence. ‘Not much.’
‘Have you always wanted to be an actor?’
‘Ever since I was old enough to know what acting was,’ she said. ‘I was cast as a donkey in a nativity play in primary school. I’ll never forget the feeling I got when I looked out at that sea of faces. I felt like I had come home. They had to drag me off when it was over. I didn’t want the play to end. Of course, my mother would’ve known why it was such a passion in me, but she never told me, not until a couple of days before she died. If anything she tried to discourage me from acting. She didn’t even let me take dancing classes. Not that we could’ve afforded them, of course.’
Flynn was looking at her with a thoughtful expression on his face. ‘It must have come as a big shock to find out who your father was. How had she settled your curiosity before then about who had fathered you?’
‘She told me she didn’t know who he was,’ Kat said. ‘When I was old enough to understand, she said she’d had a one-night stand with someone and never saw or heard from him again. I believed her because she kind of lived like that while I was growing up. She had men come and go all the time. None of her relationships lasted that long. She married at eighteen soon after she left home but they divorced before she was twenty. She wasn’t all that lucky in the men department. She attracted the wrong sort of guy. She wasn’t a great judge of character.’ Not that I can talk.
‘Were you close to her?’
Kat liked to think she had been to a point, but with her mother keeping such a secret from her for so long she wondered whether she had imagined their relationship to be something it was not in order to feel more normal. She was nothing like her mother in personality. Her mother had lacked ambition and drive. She hadn’t seemed capable of making a better life for herself. She’d had no insight into how she’d kept self-sabotaging her chance to get ahead. Kat was the opposite. She was uncompromising in the setting and achieving of goals. If she put her mind to something, she would let nothing and no one stand in her way.
‘I loved her, but she frustrated me because she didn’t seem capable of making a better life for herself,’ Kat said. ‘She didn’t even seem to want to. She cleaned hotel rooms or worked in seedy bars ever since she left home after a row with her parents as a teenager. She didn’t even try to move up the ranks or try to train for something else.’
What was she doing? She wasn’t supposed to be getting all chummy with him. What had made her spill all that baggage out? Was it because he had rescued her from the unwelcome visitor next door? Was it because he hadn’t made fun of her about her phobia? Unlike a couple of her mother’s dodgy boyfriends, who had found it great sport to see her become hysterical and paralysed with fear.
She rarely spoke to anyone of her background. Even her closest friend Maddie only knew the barest minimum about her childhood. Life had been tough growing up. Kat had always felt like an outsider. She had been the kid with the hand-me-down clothes; the one with the shoes that had come from a charity shop; the one with the home haircut, not the salon one. The kid who’d lived in run-down flats with lots of unwelcome wildlife. Money had always been tight, even though there had been ways her mother could have improved their circumstances. She sometimes wondered if her mother’s lack of drive had made her all the more rigidly focused and uncompromisingly determined.
Flynn still had that contemplative expression on his face. ‘You’re so much like your father it’s uncanny. He had his first start in theatre at the age of five too. Both he and Elisabetta talk of the buzz of being onstage in front of a live audience. It’s like a drug to them. They don’t feel truly alive without it.’
Kat wasn’t so sure she wanted to be reminded of how like Richard Ravensdale she was. She had his green-grey eyes and dark-brown hair, although her natural copper highlights were from her mother. She used to be quite pleased with her looks, thanking her lucky stars she had a good face and figure for the theatre. But now they felt more like a burden. It was a permanent reminder of how her mother had been exploited by a man who had used her and cast her away once he was done with her.
She didn’t fool herself that her mother had loved Richard and his abandonment had set her life on the self-destructive course it had taken. Her mother had already been well on her way down the slippery slope when she’d met Richard. It was more that Richard was one of many men who had used and abused her mother, fulfilling her mother’s view of herself as not worthy of being treated with respect and dignity—messages she had heard since childhood. Kat had asked her mother just before she died why she hadn’t made contact with Richard in later years to tell him he had a child. Her mother had told her it had never occurred to her. She had taken the money he’d offered and, as far as she was concerned, that was the end of it. It was typical of her mother’s lack of drive and purpose. She’d let life happen to her rather than take life by the throat and wring whatever opportunities she could out of it.
‘I’m not going to meet him, so you can put that thought right out of your mind,’ Kat said.
‘But he could help you get established in the theatre,’ Flynn said. ‘Why wouldn’t you want to make the most of your connection to him?’
‘It might be the way you lawyers climb the career ladder, by using the old boys’ network, but I prefer to get there on my own,’ Kat said. ‘I don’t need or want my father’s help. He wasn’t around when I needed it most and as far as I’m concerned it’s way too late to offer it now.’
‘What if it’s not help he’s offering?’ he said. ‘What if he just wants to get to know you? To have some sort of relationship with you?’
‘I don’t want to get to know him,’ Kat said. ‘I don’t need a father. I’ve never had one before so why would I want one now?’
‘Do you have any family now your mother’s gone?’
Kat didn’t like thinking of how alone in the world she was now. Not that she hadn’t always felt alone anyway; but somehow having no living relative now made her feel terribly isolated, as if she had been left on an island in the middle of a vast ocean with no hope of rescue. Her grandparents had died within a couple of years of each other a few years back and, as her mother had been an only child, there were no aunts, uncles or cousins.
The Christmas just gone had been one of the loneliest times in her life. She had sat by herself in a damp and cold bedsit eating tuna out of a can, trying not to think of all the warm, cosy sitting rooms where families were gathered in front of the tree unwrapping gifts, or sitting around the dining table to a sumptuous feast of turkey and Christmas pudding. To have no backup, no sense of a safe home-base to go to if things turned sour, was something she had never really grown up with, but it didn’t mean she didn’t long for it—that sense of belonging, the family traditions that gave life a sense of security, of being loved and connected to a network of people who would look out for each other.