One Penny Surprise (Saved By Desire 1) Read Free Page B

in the gutter. As far as she was concerned, life couldn’t get any worse.
    “It has. You are stuck out in an isolated park at the crack of dawn struggling not to freeze to death,” she sighed with an indignant sniff. “Arrogant oaf,” she whispered, inwardly so coldly furious with her sire that she knew that if there was time she would have gone back to the ramshackle dump they had taken up residence in, hauled him bodily out of bed, and frog-marched him across town, night-rail and all, to make this farcical assignation himself. “I mean, if the creditor wants the money, why didn’t he just come and knock on the door like a normal person? Why all of this subterfuge? He pushed the note under the door so he knows where the house is,” she grumbled, cursing the strangeness of folk.
    Lost in thought, she absently wandered from one path into another and kept walking, increasingly oblivious to her surroundings as she contemplated why she was there.
    It’s the last time I help you, she promised Clarence silently.
    Her fingers clenched protectively around the rolled up bank notes in her pocket. This relatively small amount of money was her future now, but was it enough? Should she take more out of the bag for herself? She should hand any of it over?
    Peter warning that she should use it for herself and not allow Clarence to get his hands on it still rang in her ears. At the time, the harshness in her normally mild-mannered cousin’s instruction had alarmed her. She had nodded her agreement without thinking because she had not wanted to offend him while he was willing to help her. Although she had never asked either Clarence, or Peter outright, she wondered what Clarence had done to her cousin to bring about such acrimony, but then at the moment had enough problems of her own without probing into historic discord. Whatever had gone on between the two of them, deep inside she knew she should heed Peter’s rather ebullient order.
    She felt a little guilty that the right amount wasn’t in the bag she was about to hand over to the stranger she was going to meet anyway. At some point Clarence was going to find out and then all Hell will be let loose. He would almost certainly try to bully her into going back to Peter’s for more money, and that was something she was definitely not going to do.
    “I need to take the money and run,” she whispered defiantly, echoing Peter’s exact words to her. Still, she kept walking, more out of curiosity than anything else. She wanted to see this creditor and tell them that Clarence wasn’t prepared to pay the cash. With the money in her hand to provide for her, it didn’t matter if she couldn’t go back to the hovel, so long as she had something to rely on.
    “Thankfully,” she muttered several minutes later when it quickly became evident that her instincts were right and the narrow, winding river suddenly appeared through the trees a few feet ahead.
    The note hadn’t said where ‘by the river’ exactly, so the best thing she could do was pick a spot and wait. After all, it wasn’t as if anyone could miss her. She was a single woman all alone in the middle of a vast and empty park at a time when most civilised people were still tucked up in their beds. Her mystery assignation would be a fine imbecile indeed if he walked right past her.
    “Now what?” she whispered as she stared at the mist that hovered over everything. The smog had fallen thickly last night and still lingered hauntingly over the city this morning. It gave the air an almost expectant feel that just heightened her nerves and made her tremble even more.
    Willing herself to remain as calm as possible, she clutched her bag tighter and studied the river. Was she standing on the right side of it? The bank opposite was exactly the same. The idiot who had sent the note hadn’t been all that specific about where to meet exactly so, as far as she was concerned, if anyone had the wrong side, the wrong place etc., it was