Nick rubbed a hand across his face, grimacing at the rasp of stubble. He was so tired he could sleep for a week. A horse with colic wasn’t his idea of fun, especially when it involved a very expensive hunter and a notoriously irascible owner. Apparently, the horse had rolled in the stall and got itself stuck. It was imperative a horse with colic doesn’t lie down, but if did and didn’t quickly get back onto its feet, then it might die. With the vet on another call and with time being of the utmost importance, Edgar Ferris had called Nick, who was driving back from an event in his car with the horsebox following behind. Luckily, he was only just outside Tanglewood, so he had left the lumbering horsebox to make its way back to The Furlongs and had hightailed it to The Manor.
Unfortunately, he had been delayed a little when, as he drove up the main street, he had encountered two rather inebriated girls and his conscience simply couldn’t leave them there. He had made sure Stevie got home safely, then had driven Leanne to the farm where she lived with her dad, mum and two older brothers. Her parents hadn’t been best pleased to see the state she was in, but after explaining he’d had nothing whatsoever to do with her present state, he’d dashed off to The Manor for three hours of hard labour.
Nick glanced at the illuminated time on the dashboard – three forty-nine in the morning. He groaned, wanting nothing more than a hot shower and bed. But before that his conscience once again got the better of him, insisting he had one more task to perform – to check on Stevie.
When he had seen her earlier, he had recognised her immediately, even sopping wet and cavorting like a mad witch in the middle of the road. He’d not forgotten either of their previous meetings but he had determinedly put her to the back of his mind; romantic entanglements were not on his agenda right now. If ever.
Anyway, Miranda was enough of a problem. Even after he’d made it clear he had no interest in her, she still pursued him ruthlessly. Tonight had been no exception. He had to admire her, though – even in the middle of the night, with a valuable horse with colic and an apoplectic father shouting at everything and everyone (except the horse), she had managed to look as though she had just stepped out of a page three version of Horse and Hound.
Boy, had he been glad to get out of there with only a vague promise of dinner next week. Battle of the sexes, be buggered! It was all out nuclear war! She’d flirted with him outrageously, despite her father being there, and at one point he’d been seriously worried Lord Tonbridge was going to retrieve one of the rifles from his gun cabinet and shoot him with it. Nick guessed the only thing stopping the older man, was that Nick was there and the vet hadn’t arrived yet. Nick was cheaper than the vet too, and Edgar Ferris wasn’t a man to spend a pound when he could get away with spending a penny. Not that Nick would see any payment for his efforts tonight – this was on the house, so to speak.
He pulled into the kerb outside the tea shop and peered through the car windows. All was in darkness, but that didn’t necessarily make him feel any better. He should never have left a drunken woman alone, and he wouldn’t have done, if it hadn’t been for the horsey emergency.
He sighed loudly, got out of the car and rattled the café’s door. To his surprise and alarm, it opened to his touch and his heart fell; she hadn’t managed to lock up after he had left her. What else had she not managed to do?
He soon found out.
‘Hello? Stevie? Are you there?’ he called.
There was no answer, so he ventured further inside and made his way past the counter, into the kitchen, and called again.
‘Stevie? It’s Nick. Are you OK?’
He was reluctant to venture upstairs without her knowledge. For one thing, a strange man suddenly appearing in her home would terrify her. And for another, from what he had seen of her so far, she was likely to brain him with a frying pan first and ask what the hell he was playing at later.
‘Why am I doing this?’ he muttered darkly, his hand groping across the wall for a light switch. She was probably in bed, sleeping it off.
Bloody hell, where was the damned switch? He groped some more. Nothing, but at least his eyes were starting to adjust, and he could make out a pile of clothes on the island in the middle of the kitchen, and hear a steady drip of water coming from them, landing with a plop into a puddle underneath.
Thank God! At least she’d had the sense to take off her wet things, he thought.
Then the clothes moved.
‘Aaagggh!’ he screamed, as a disjointed body jerked upright in front of him. It had no face!
The marionette raised a hand to its head and parted the strands of limp hair and Nick stumbled backwards, staggering towards the door.
‘Wha? Whoos’ere?’ it said.
Nick didn’t believe in ghosts, or anything else supernatural for that matter, but some of the houses in and around Tanglewood were old, as were the stories that went with them. He had a sudden, awful thought there may be some truth to them.
‘Uggg,’ the figure groaned, and Nick made an answering moaning noise in his own throat without realising.
The thing was trying to get off the counter. It was coming for him.
He turned and fled.
He had got as far as three steps into the shop when something tangled in his legs and sent him crashing to the floor, and he narrowly avoided hitting his head on one of the tables. It had caught him, dear lord, the thing had caught him. He could feel bony hands grasping his ankle and working its way up his shin.
He squirmed onto his back, fists clenched, prepared to go down fighting, and let out a shriek when the “hand” jumped onto his stomach.
A loud meow followed.
The fight went out of him and he sank back onto the wooden floor, like a deflating balloon.
It was a cat, a bloody cat.
And now the damn animal was kneading his chest and purring contentedly. He lifted it off and put it on the floor, then scrambled to his feet a little unsteadily and peered into the darkness of the kitchen, his heart thumping.
The hand-on-his-ankle issue might have been resolved logically, but there was still the problem of the hideous, ragged puppet-like thing in the room beyond.
He listened hard, hearing nothing. Even the cat stopped its kneading and sat there, its head cocked to one side.
Silence.
Nick debated whether he should venture into the darkness, decided it must have been his imagination, overwrought because he was so tired, and he took the coward’s way out. He scuttled back to his car, looking over his shoulder as he went and didn’t breathe properly until he was in the driver’s seat with the doors securely locked.
Then he slapped a hand to his forehead.
Stevie was still in there.
Stevie peered groggily out from behind a curtain of tangled wet strands. Something had woken her and she wasn’t happy about it. She’d been having a lovely sleep, then crashing, banging, and screaming.
A movement in the shadows caught her eye and she gasped, shrinking back on her table. She realised what it was when it began to meow plaintively.
‘G’way, Peggy,’ she slurred. ‘I’m shleeping.’
Peggy sprang onto the table and snuggled against Stevie, before realising her mistress was decidedly damp and jumping back down again, with a yowl of disgust.
Stevie noticed how wet she was at the same time as the cat did. She lowered her feet to the floor and sat on the edge of the counter, her head hanging, and shivered violently.
The least drunken part of her brain urged her to get out of her wet clothes and go to bed, and so, clambering awkwardly off the table, she lurched and staggered across the kitchen, discarding various pieces of clothing as she went.
By the time she reached her bedroom, she was almost naked and her teeth were chattering so hard she thought they might shatter. Grabbing her dressing gown off the hook on the bedroom door, she wrapped herself in it, fell on the bed, and was asleep again in seconds.
Nick was totally ashamed of himself. He’d never run away from a fight in his life (not that he’d had many, but a lad couldn’t live on a council estate and go to one of the roughest schools in the area without having an altercation or two along the way).
Yet, here he was, a man who, on a daily basis handled horses weighing more than half a tonne, sitting in his car, trying to build up the courage to go back into the building.
‘It’s a fecking tea shop, for God’s sake, not a haunted mansion. Get a grip, Saunders,’ he muttered. He couldn’t really have seen what he thought he’d seen. It simply wasn’t possible. And if it was, then Stevie was in danger and he had to go back in there and do something about it.
‘Shit!’
He got out of the car, slammed the door and rolled his shoulders. Here goes nothing, he thought, and taking a deep breath he marched towards the tea shop’s door.
Look at how he’d thought someone (something) had grabbed his ankle, when it had only been a stupid cat and his even more stupid imagination. He must have imagined the figure on the table, too. After all, it was dark in the kitchen, and all that reflecting steel made for some odd shadows thrown by the street lights filtering in.
He deliberately didn’t want to think about the noises the imagined figure had made when it had clapped its hellish eyes on him.
Reaching the door, he eased it open, his gaze darting around the room. It was clear of cats, ghosts and anything else that shouldn’t be there. Reassured, he ventured further inside, creeping as silently as possible. If there actually was something in the kitchen (and as time went on, he was less inclined to believe what he saw), he didn’t want to alert it to his presence.
He hesitated when he reached the kitchen door. It was open, allowing enough light in to see that the steel counter in the middle of the room was empty. Another slow breath, and he stepped into the room.
When his foot landed on something squishy, he almost let out a yell, before he realised what it was.
A boot.
Its twin lay a few feet away.
At least he hadn’t stepped on the cat. Or something worse.
Nick was starting to lose patience, as well as feeling rather daft. Telling himself not to be so ridiculous, he retreated to the door, patting the wall as he went, until he located the row of light switches. He flicked them all on.
Dear God! The light, the light! Nick screwed his eyes shut as the sudden glare blinded him, before opening them very slowly to give his poor eyeballs time to become accustomed.
The kitchen gleamed (literally – all that steel!). It was spotlessly clean too, except for a trail of clothes leading to another door at the side, with a flight of stairs beyond.
Two boots, one pair of jeans, a lightweight jacket – too lightweight for today’s, or rather yesterday’s, weather, for it had rained solidly for the past forty-eight hours, lay scattered at his feet. He followed the garment trail up the stairs, feeling even more silly than he already felt with each step and each item he found. He had a sneaking suspicion he knew what the hideous, life-sized puppet thing had been…
He found Stevie on the bed, face down, with the cat curled around her head, and he might have been worried if she wasn’t snoring quite so loudly.
Not meaning to, but unable to stop himself, he studied her – not that he could see much considering her face was planted in her pillow and the rest of her was wrapped in some disgusting tartan robe. Every now and again, a shudder ran through her.
She’s still chilled, he realised, and she could do with being under the duvet and not on top of it, too.
Thinking it unlikely, but you never know, Nick went into the little kitchen (a far cry from the industrial one downstairs – this one was cosy and homely) and rooted around for a hot water bottle.
Five minutes later he was back at her bedside with a hot microwaved neck- warmer (the closest thing he could find), a glass of orange juice, and another glass containing water.
The mound on the bed was still shaking.
Nick slid the neck-warmer into the bottom of the bed, took a fortifying deep breath, and prepared to tackle Stevie.
First, he tried tugging the duvet from underneath her, but she was having none of it, gripping onto it with unconscious determination, while the cat looked on placidly. Then he wondered if she had a spare duvet he could simply throw over her.
He quickly checked around. She didn’t have one in the room and he didn’t want to explore the rest of the flat.
Finally, he decided there was nothing for it, but to pick her up, pull the duvet back, and put her into bed.
He didn’t bargain for a very sleepy Stevie wrapping her arms around his neck when he turned her over and lifted her off the bed. Neither did he bargain for the grubby old dressing-gown to fall open, revealing a lacy pink bra, matching knickers, and Stevie’s body underneath.
He swallowed and averted his eyes, but not before he’d seen more than he wanted to. Actually, he did want to, which was why he hastily looked away, and had to force himself not to look back down at her curves.
Quickly pulling the now-free duvet aside, he lowered her gently onto the bed. Stevie murmured a protest when he disentangled her arms from around his neck, but when he pulled the covers up to her chin, and her feet found the heat-source at the bottom of the bed, she soon snuggled down.
He stayed long enough to satisfy himself she was properly asleep and not in a drunken stupor (he didn’t want to risk her being sick in the night), and that the shivering had stopped, then he went off to his own cold bed, knowing he’d have to get out of it in a couple of hours.
But as he drove back to The Furlongs, all he could think of was how right Stevie had felt in his arms, how beautiful she’d looked and how much of a pervert she’d think he was when she woke up.