Tuesday, January 21, 2014

A Page Straight From Sheila Claydon #apagestraightfrom


Pathway to Tomorrow, Book 1 by Sheila Claydon


Marcus glanced up from his computer as the trailer door opened, expecting to see his site manager. Instead, a leggy blonde wearing too much make-up and too few clothes confronted him.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

“Nice!” she said. “With a few tweaks it would make a good headline.”

“So would journalist thrown out for trespassing on private property!”

“It would if it were true,” she conceded, pushing the trailer door shut behind her and leaning against the wall.

Marcus sighed.  A groupie! That was all he needed. He’d spent months searching for the right place to build his house, looking for somewhere close enough to the main arterial roads that led to airports and big cities to make travel easy, but isolated enough to give him the peace and space he needed to concentrate on his work. Isolated enough, too, to protect Luke from the outside world that so distressed him now he was growing older.

The search, the negotiations, the meetings with architects and builders had eaten into the hours he needed to complete his latest project, but he had considered it worth it until the girl with the large chestnut horse had disrupted his plans. And now this! He hadn’t even considered fans, and if he had he would have dismissed them, sure they would be few and far between in such a small, tucked away village.

He stood up. “Who let you in?”

“Nobody. I climbed the gate.”

“Didn’t you see the no trespassing sign?”

“Oh that!” she waved a hand as if the red and white board was a mere inconvenience.  “I didn’t take any notice of it. I knew you’d talk to me.”

“Really!  I’d be interested to know when you figured that out. Was it as you were climbing over the locked gate, or was it when you walked past the sign?”

She grinned at him and for a brief moment he was pierced by a sense of bewildering familiarity. “It wasn’t any of those. It was because you talked to Jodie.”

He frowned. “Jodie, as in small, dark and irritating? Jodie as in permanently attached to a large chestnut horse?”

“That’s the one,” she agreed, her grin stretching wider. “And you’re right, she can be very irritating, but it’s only because she cares.”

“So you’re not a fan.  You’re here about that damned bridleway.”

Yes…no…I mean…yes I am a fan, and no I’m not here about the bridleway…well not specifically anyway.”

He shook his head.  “How about you just tell me what you are here for…specifically…and then you go.”

Ignoring his sarcasm she pushed herself off the wall and stood upright in front of him.  As she did so her grin faded and she suddenly looked very serious.

“I want you to give me music lessons.”

Whatever he had expected, it wasn’t that.  For a long moment he stared at her, then he burst into genuine laughter. She had nerve, he had to give her that. And if she was aiming at a stage career then she had the right equipment too. Tall and willowy with legs that went on forever, she looked good.
His laughter died when he noticed the desperation in her eyes.  She wasn’t anywhere near as confident as she looked.  Underneath the provocative clothes and the make-up she was frightened to death, but there was a hunger there he recognized from his own past. Against his better judgment the musician in him was intrigued.

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