For His Eyes Only Read Free

forgot to breathe.
    ‘Natasha!’
    She jumped, blinked and when she looked again he’d gone and for a moment she was afraid that he was coming back. Hoped that he was coming back, but a moment later he reappeared further along the street and she turned her back on the window before he felt her eyes boring into the back of his head and turned again to catch her looking.
    ‘Have you spoken to the Chronicle ?’ she asked; anything to distract herself.
    ‘The first thing I did when Mr Hadley’s solicitor contacted me early this morning was to call the Chronicle ’s advertising manager.’ Miles walked across to his desk and removed a sheet of paper from a file and handed it to her. ‘He sent this over from his office. Hadley hasn’t seen it yet but it’s only a matter of time before his lawyer contacts them.’
    It was a photocopied proof of the ad for Hadley Chase—exactly as she’d read it out—complete with a tick next to the ‘approved’ box and her signature scrawled across the bottom.
    ‘No, Miles. This is wrong.’ She looked up. ‘This isn’t what I signed.’
    ‘But you did write that,’ he insisted.
    ‘One or two of the phrases sound vaguely familiar,’ she admitted.
    She sometimes wrote a mock advertisement describing a property in the worst possible light when she thought it would help the vendor to see the property through the eyes of a potential buyer. The grubby carpet in the hall, the children’s finger marks on the doors, the tired kitchen. Stuff that wouldn’t cost much to fix, but would make all the difference to the prospects of a sale.
    ‘Oh, come on, Tash. It sounds exactly like one of your specials.’
    ‘My “specials” have the advantage of being accurate. And helpful.’
    ‘So you would have mentioned the leaking roof?’
    ‘Absolutely. Damaged ceilings and pools of water are about as off-putting as it gets,’ she said, hating that she was on the defensive when she hadn’t done anything wrong.
    ‘What about the stairs?’
    ‘I’m sure they’d be lovely if you could see them for the dust and dead leaves that blew in through a broken window.’ The house had been empty since the last occupant had been moved to a nursing home when Alzheimer’s had left him a danger to himself a couple of years ago. ‘The caretaker is worse than useless. I had to find some card and fill the gap myself but it’s just a temporary solution. The first serious gust of wind will blow it out. And, frankly, if I were Darius Hadley I’d put a boot up the backside of the estate executor because he’s no help.’ He didn’t reply. ‘Come on, Miles. You know I didn’t send this to the Chronicle .’
    ‘Are you sure about that? Really? We all know that you’ve been putting in long hours. What time was your first viewing this morning?’
    ‘Eight, but—’
    ‘What time did you finish last night?’ He didn’t wait for her to answer but consulted a printout of her diary, no doubt supplied by Janine. No wonder she’d been smiling. This was much more fun than an office party. Gossip city... ‘Your last viewing was at nine-thirty so you were home at what? Eleven? Eleven-thirty?’
    It had been after midnight. Buyers couldn’t always fit into a tidy nine-till-five slot. Far from complaining about the extra hours she put in, that they all put in—with the exception of Toby, who never allowed anything to interfere with rugby training, took time off whenever he felt like it and got away with murder because his great-aunt was married to Peter Black—Miles expected it.
    ‘They flew from the States to view that apartment. I could hardly tell them that I finished at five-thirty,’ she pointed out. They’d come a long way and wanted to see every detail and she wasn’t about to rush them.
    ‘No one can keep up that pace for long without something suffering,’ he replied, not even bothering to ask if they were likely to make an offer. ‘It seems obvious to me that you attached the wrong