Emerald Mistress Read Free

unconcern when people asked when the big day would be. She would have cut off her arm sooner than let Luke guess just how keen she was to buy into marriage and eventually motherhood, because she did not want him to feel under pressure. But they had been together five years and engaged for two; at twenty-eight she was ready for the next step.
    Once home, she listened to a message on her answering machine.
    Alice’s beautifully modulated speaking tones, honed to an aristocratic edge by her expensive education, filled the room. ‘I thought we could do lunch…but obviously you’re off doing your big business bit somewhere. Shame! Catch you another time. I’m off to Nice tonight.’
    Harriet suppressed a disappointed sigh just as the doorbell sounded. Lunching with her glitzy kid sister and hearing all about her wonderfully exciting life was always entertaining.
    It was Juliet, the pneumatic blonde glamour model who lived across the hall. ‘I’m moving out this evening.’
    ‘My goodness, that’s sudden—’
    ‘I’m off to Europe with my bloke and I have a favour to ask…’ Juliet, who never came to Harriet’s door for any other reason, displayed perfect teeth in an expectant smile. ‘You have such a soft heart, and you’re fantastic with animals. Would you give Samson a home?’
    Harriet blinked in dismay. Samson was Juliet’s chihuahua, purchased as a girlie fashion accessory when the film
Legally Blonde
had been in vogue. Harriet realised she’d not seen the little dog since another resident had reminded Juliet of the no-pets clause in her rental agreement. ‘I didn’t know you still had him.’
    ‘He’s been living a life of luxury in a posh pet hotel and costing me a bloody fortune,’ Juliet lamented. ‘But I don’t have time to sell him.’
    ‘I’m sorry—I can’t help.’ Harriet hardened her heart against the thought of poor neglected Samson and felt very much like shaking his feckless owneruntil her pearly teeth rattled in her selfish head. ‘Couldn’t the kennels find another home for him?’
    ‘No, they’d rather hang on to him to make more dosh out of me!’ Juliet wailed accusingly. ‘You’ve got to help me with this. Danny’s picking me up in less than an hour!’
    ‘I’m afraid I don’t have anywhere to keep a dog either.’ Harriet steeled herself not to surrender to the blonde’s steamrolling personality; Luke was not a dog lover, and had vehemently objected when she had once taken care of Samson over a weekend.
    An hour and a half later, having changed into a blue dress that was a particular favourite of Luke’s, Harriet was on the way over to his flat with the intention of surprising him—his conference would have ended by now. She clutched the ingredients of an oriental stir-fry; he loved her cooking. Would it be manipulative to feed him before she mentioned the giant black cloud hovering on her career horizon? Her scrupulous conscience twanged. She was also being haunted by an image of Samson, small enough to sit in pint jug, being bullied by other larger dogs in some gloomy canine holiday home. But the chihuahua was not her responsibility, she reminded herself hurriedly. Luke got really irritated when she plunged headfirst into helping other people solve their problems.
    She let herself into his ultra modern apartment and went straight down the hall and into the kitchen. A burst of giggling from the open plan living-cum-bedroom area made her still in surprise. She moved to the door.
    ‘We called her Porky Pie when we were kids,’ a familiar female voice was saying. ‘Ma was so ashamed of Harriet that she once pretended that she was the housekeeper’s child. She was plump, and she talked with a horrible country bumpkin accent. She might have slimmed down since then, but she’s still got a fat face and a bum the width of a combine harvester.’
    Harriet was welded to the spot by astonishment. What was Alice doing in Luke’s apartment, and why was her sister saying