Blueprint for Love (Choc Lit) (8 page)

          George claimed to know nothing about the green light, but having seen it several times now, Hazel knew it couldn’t be her imagination. Expensive machinery was stored in that outbuilding. What if someone was trying to break in?

          Without any thought to the consequences, she quickly put on a tracksuit and a pair of trainers, found her way through the darkened, labyrinthine house, and out through the rose garden. She took no torch with her and had no intention of calling out ‘who’s there?’ as silly women always did in films. She intended to assess what was going on first before alerting anyone else.

          Besides, the thought of going into Jonathan’s bedroom to shake him awake was enough to send her pulse racing. She imagined him lying tousle-haired among the sheets, his skin warm from sleep, a strong arm stretched out in front of him, cradling a pillow. An impossible heat rose in her face, and she blinked hard to dispel the image.

She found the outbuilding and was surprised by the level of security around it. Cordoned off by a razor wire fence, the building had CCTV cameras on every corner, as far as Hazel could see, as well as a keypad entry system on the fence gate.

          Despite this, the gate stood open. After a moment’s hesitation, Hazel stepped through it, conscious of the camera right above the door which thankfully seemed to be angled away from her. The green light from the windows reflected eerily against the shiny leaves of the mature rhododendron bushes surrounding the building, but the windows were too high for Hazel to look through, and she glanced around for something to stand on. Finding a rickety crate, she climbed up, only to be disappointed. The glass was opaque and, although she could see movement inside and hear voices – male voices – she could discern nothing else.

          Pressing her ear to the window, she hoped to catch something of what was being said, but the twisting movement, combined with her weight, was more than the old crate could take. Her foot went through the rotten wood with a loud crack, sending shooting pains up her shin.

          Her heart jumped into her throat as the door was flung open, and she came face-to-face with one of the men in the shed. That the person was Jonathan should have made her feel relieved, but it didn’t. His expression was thunderous.

          ‘What are you doing here?’

         
‘I, er ...’ Struggling to get her foot out of the broken crate, Hazel tumbled backwards and landed unceremoniously on her behind. Jonathan made no move to help her up, and the deliberate omission almost made tears well up in her eyes. This wasn’t the Jonathan she knew.

         
‘I saw the light,’ she explained in a small voice, when she got back on her feet. ‘George told me you keep expensive machines in here. I thought it was a burglar.’

         
‘And you thought you’d deal with this burglar on your own, did you?’ Jonathan’s expression was unreadable. ‘All eight stone of you?’

          Hazel felt her cheeks heat up.
‘Hm, put like that, it does sound crazy.’

          Jonathan’s lips were twitching, but he didn’t comment on that. Instead, he said,
‘What did you see?’

         
‘See?’

         
‘In the shed.’

         
‘I ... nothing. I couldn’t see anything through the glass.’

          He nodded.
‘You have no business here, Hazel, even if you did suspect a burglary. Go back to bed.’ With that, he returned to the shed, sliding home a bolt on the inside.

          Needing no further encouragement, Hazel ran back to the house, or rather stumbled because of her injured shin. When she got back to her flat, she threw herself on the bed and buried her face in a pillow, utterly mortified.

         
What must he think of me?

          Forget the way their eyes often met, or the way her heart beat faster just thinking of him. Forget the notion that he might be warming to her, as she was to him. He’d seen her at her worst. A busybody, a meddler, someone who poked her nose into things which were none of her business. A Nosy Parker.

         
How could I have been so stupid?

          As she lay with her face in the pillow to hide the embarrassment which still made her cringe, she felt her confidence and credibility evaporate. Perhaps it was best if she admitted defeat and went back to London.

          It was the thought of never seeing Jonathan again which brought her to her senses. She knew she was falling in love with him, but whether he felt the same way about her or not, self-preservation dictated that she held her head high and apologised for her idiotic behaviour, like the mature and sensible individual she believed herself to be. The rest was up to him.

But that was easier said than done.

          Jonathan didn’t give her an opportunity to apologise the next day. Whenever she was close enough to mention it, there was always someone else around requiring his attention, and when she finally had him on her own for a split second, he merely shook his head.

          ‘Forget it,’ he said, almost tersely.

          She was left feeling even more like a wayward teenager. In the end she tried to put it behind her, but somehow Tabitha sensed something was up and exploited her hesitation.

          Why did she have to be so sharp-eyed? Hazel thought, when Tabitha had sent her on another pointless errand for the umpteenth time.

          The final straw was when Tabitha hinted that there was an
‘understanding’ between herself and Jonathan, whatever that was supposed to mean. By then Hazel was ready to scream. She escaped to the kitchen to offload on Irene.

         
‘Don’t take any notice of her,’ said Irene. ‘She’s a bit
Upstairs, Downstairs
, that one. Nothing you can do will change it. The best you can do is be who you are and keep minding your own ‘Ps’ and ‘Qs’. Then you’ll be above reproach if it comes to blows.’

          Having someone as wise as Irene on her side made Hazel feel a little better, and she returned to the office with renewed determination. There was no reason why she should allow Tabitha to chase her out of a perfectly good job.

Jonathan sighed as he put the phone down after yet another lengthy and frustrating conversation with his client, Robert Miles. He liked working with the man and was impressed by his vision for regenerating the area, but Miles wanted to be kept informed of every little detail, which was immensely time-consuming. Jonathan had just reassured his client that their planning application was going through as hoped, but he was certain this wasn’t the last conversation they’d have today.

          Another problem preoccupied him. When he’d caught Hazel looking in through the windows of his father’s lab, his first reaction had been anger and suspicion at what she was doing there, followed by genuine admiration for her pluck. Seeing her awkwardness, he’d believed her when she said she suspected a burglary. He’d liked Hazel from the very beginning; he had a feeling she was the kind of person who’d never be capable of lying without betraying it in some way. No, she’d definitely been telling the truth.

          So why had he humiliated her? He’d treated her like a naughty child and knew he owed her an apology. Yet she was acting as if she owed
him
an apology. It baffled him, but whenever an opportunity presented itself to bring it up, he couldn’t find the words to express what he felt. It seemed easier to just tell her to forget the whole thing.

          Except he didn’t want to do that himself. He had to clear the air between them somehow, so that they could go back to their former easy footing. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel awkward around him, and he suspected that was exactly what was happening at the moment. Besides, he really liked her, and the idea of her not talking to him upset him more than he cared to admit.

          He swore silently to himself. They had to talk about it, and soon.

          Frowning, he looked up as his father entered his office and closed the door firmly behind him.

          ‘Dad? What can I do for you?’

         
‘It’s that girl,’ said George. ‘Your new secretary. Hazel. I want to talk about her.’

         
‘What’s she done now? I mean, apart from peeping through your windows.’

         
‘Nothing.’ George crossed his arms.

         
‘Then what’s the problem?’

          Through the glass partition, Jonathan glanced across the office to the far end where Hazel was sitting. She was tapping a pencil against her chin – something he’d come to view as her thinking pose – then she quickly scribbled something on a yellow Post-it note and stuck it to the front of a folder. She seemed completely absorbed in what she was doing.

          ‘I don’t trust her,’ George continued.

          Jonathan’s eyes flew back to his father.
‘Because of last night?’

         
‘That’s only part of it. For starters, she wasn’t the one we expected, was she?’

         
‘The other secretary had an accident, and the agency sent a replacement,’ Jonathan pointed out.

         
‘Yes, but don’t you think that was a little convenient? One girl
happens
to break her leg, and the agency
happens
to have another suitable applicant on their books?’

          Jonathan smiled wearily. Ever since his father had been swindled out of his share of the research company by his unscrupulous partner, he’d been paranoid. But whenever he broached the subject, as gently as he could, George’s temper would flare up and they wouldn’t speak for days.

          ‘I’m sure it wasn’t so convenient for the girl who broke her leg,’ he said, with only a hint of sarcasm.

          George wasn’t listening.
‘What if she’s in cahoots with that other woman, that catty blonde?’

         
‘Tabitha,’ Jonathan corrected him automatically. He felt uncomfortable when his father criticised anyone in his employ, even if there was a good reason. He looked at Tabitha, saw her flicking her golden hair, and pouting and posing as if she knew she was being watched. Then he looked across to pixie-haired Hazel again, whose loyalty to him had made her want to tackle, single-handedly, what she thought was a burglar. He remembered the wounded look in her soft brown eyes last night; it had shaken him to see her like that, and even more so that he’d been the cause of her anguish. She was the polar opposite to Tabitha.

         
‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Like chalk and cheese, those two. Besides, Tabitha has never made any secret of her old job with the oil company.’

         
‘Uh-huh.’ George raised his eyebrows. ‘Ever asked her why she left them?’

         
‘She didn’t approve of the way they were doing business. In her shoes, neither would I.’

         
‘And you believed her? What if she’s an industrial spy? What if this Hazel person is one too? Apart from the fact that I don’t want people around when I conduct dangerous experiments in that building, I’m not having anyone steal my invention. These new bio-friendly fuels are meant to benefit the whole world, not just some unscrupulous company.’

         
‘You haven’t succeeded yet, Dad.’

         
‘That’s beside the point. And I don’t want anyone in there, trampling all my plants either. Then how will I be able to extract any oils from them? You mark my words, someone will be after my invention. How can you be sure it’s not either of them?’

         
‘I can’t,’ Jonathan admitted, ‘but if I go around suspecting my employees of lawlessness, imagine the kind of working environment that would create. I’m not sure about Tabitha, but I think Hazel is exactly who she says she is, and she’s a genuinely nice and trustworthy person.’ He couldn’t be wrong about that, could he?

         
‘How do you know?’ George insisted.

         
‘Dad,’ he sighed. ‘I just know.’

         
‘Like you ‘just knew’ last time?’

          Jonathan’s face flushed, but before he could reply, George held up his hands.

          ‘Sorry, son, that was below the belt.’

          Shaking his head, Jonathan said in a thick voice,
‘No, you were right about Arabella. I wasn’t enough for her, couldn’t live up to her lofty ideals, and that caused her to look elsewhere. Sad, but true.’

         
‘She was a scheming and manipulative ...’ George began, but stopped when Jonathan glared at him.

         
‘She was the mother of my children, and I want them to have an unsullied image of her, even if they don’t remember her.’

          George glared back.
‘Fair enough. If they were my boys, I’d want to protect them too. The thing is, as you’ve noticed, they’ve taken rather a shine to young Hazel there, and if she isn’t who she says she is ...’ He trailed off.