Pathway to Tomorrow, Book 1 by Sheila Claydon
“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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