His Convenient Mistress Read Free

no family.’
    Fool that she was, she had actually, six weeks ago, looked forward to the country life full of people who would know her name, had pleasantly anticipated walking into shops and chatting with the people inside them. Bliss, she had idiotically thought, after her time in London, where life had been lived at breakneck speed and smiling at the shop assistants was regarded as a form of lunacy.
    Her three days of isolation and peace had put paid to her illusions. She hated it here, hated the lack of noise, hated the horizon-less countryside, hated the utter stillness and had avoided heading into the town with something approaching obsession.
    Naturally, sooner or later, the town, she now thought, would come to meet her. One by one. And there, approaching in a blue vehicle, was visitor number one.
    Oh, heavens, but she had made a dreadful mistake. She had dared to think that the grass was going to be greener on the other side, and greener it was here, yes. Literally. But that was as far as it went. How on earth was she ever going to survive?
    The car trundled through the fields, wending a lazy and inexorable path towards the Rectory, and Sara fleetingly contemplated hiding.
    Where was Simon? She listened, heard him in the snug across the landing from the kitchen, happy as a lark, setting up his bricks on the low wooden table no doubt, a handy, child-friendly piece of furniture, precious few of which had previously cluttered his life.
    She only turned away from the window when the car was entering its final swing towards her circular courtyard. Then she breathed a little sigh of resignation, glancedbriefly in the direction of the snug with an expression of longing and reluctantly opened the kitchen door.
    She looked a mess. She knew that. In London, now a lifetime away, she had always been impeccably groomed. Had had to be, to compete in the heavily male-dominated world she had inhabited. Her long red hair had always been tamed away from her face, securely pinned up, her make-up had been the armour of the top businesswoman, as had her assortment of sober-coloured, extremely expensive designer suits. Snappy, fashionable, but not ostentatious. In the City, success was always subtly dressed.
    Here, though, in the space of only a few days, her grooming had slowly but surely unravelled. No make-up for starters and certainly nothing approaching work clothes. Just jeans and T-shirts and flat loafers.
    It was what she was wearing now. Faded jeans, snug-fitting dark green T-shirt that almost but not quite matched the colour of her eyes, and her brown loafers.
    She stood by the kitchen door, squinting into the sun, barely able to make out the driver of the car.
    Her hair was plaited back, one thick braid that fell almost to her waist, from which escaped the usual rebellious tendrils. An inelegant hairstyle but practical for the thousand and one jobs she had to do around the house.
    Her visitor was a man. Sara shaded her eyes, waiting and watching as the man killed his engine, pushed open the door and emerged from his car in one easy movement.
    He was tall. Very tall and dark. Her green eyes took him in with a quick stirring of surprise. He didn’t look Scottish. His skin was olive and his hair was dark and thick, curling into the nape of his neck. Nothing about him looked local. From his physical appearance to the angular lines of his face that spoke of power, self-assurance and worldly-wise experience.
    He looked like a city-dweller, she thought with a rush of disdain. The usual high-powered type she had spent years dealing with. A mover and a shaker who did deals and transformed the whole process of money-making into a number-one priority. She had spent many a long business lunch with types like this one, men in love with themselves and casually indifferent to anything that stood in the way of them getting what they wanted. In fact, she had made the irreparable mistake of actually doing more than just business with one of