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door. He stopped right outside; James got out of the car and turned to help Patience out.
    'Here you are. Goodbye. And I don't want to see you again.'
    She slid down from the car and stumbled over his foot. Quite deliberately, in his opinion, but it would be useless to point that out. Sighing, James caught her before she hit the path and picked her up. She was beginning to feel comfortable in his arms. He would have to watch that. This girl was insidious as ivy; she would be growing all over him soon if he wasn't careful.
    'Okay, this is the last thing I do,' he told her coldly. 'I will carry you to your front door, but I am not going inside.'.
    He waited for an argument, but didn't get one, which was ominous in itself.
    He would dump her on the doorstep and run back to the car and safety.

    She looked over his shoulder at Barny, gave him that lovely, sweet smile.
    'Thank you, Barny.'
    Suspiciously, James demanded, 'How do you know his name?'
    She turned her hazel eyes up to him. 'You've been calling him that all the way.'
    He got the smile this time, and felt his stomach muscles contract disturbingly.
    'You are funny,' she told him indulgently.
    He carried her up the steps on to the verandah and over the painted wooden floor which creaked every step of the way. James forced himself to put her down at the front door.
    'Well, goodbye, Miss Kirby, don't come to my office again. I have tightened up security procedures; you won't get in again.'
    She gave him a distinctly wicked glance through her long, darkened lashes.
    'I bet I could if I really tried.'
    He bet she could, too. His security men were only human.
    Sternly, he said, 'Don't try. I would hate you to land in jail.'
    'You'd love it,' she said, mouth curling, pink and teasing. 'Men love to exercise power. Tyranny is their favourite occupation.'
    James refused to argue with her any more. He turned to go back to the car, but at that second the front door swung open and a noisy multitude rushed out of the house and engulfed him in barking dogs with wagging tails and licking tongues, what appeared to be a dozen yelling children in scruffy jeans and sweaters, two old ladies in floral aprons and an old man in dirty boots and dungarees.

    James should have fled there and then but he was too slow, too busy looking at the old ladies and wondering" if one of them was his mother. He saw no resemblance at all, but then would he, after twenty-five years? Patience had said that his mother was frail and delicate. The description did not fit either of the two women; they looked tough and capable, in spite of both being at least seventy years old.
    'He's taken our puppy and he's going to drown it!' one of the children sobbed.
    'Make him give it back.'
    Patience was greeting dogs, her small hands busy on their heads, impeded by their licking tongues. 'What puppy?' she asked the tallest child, a boy with a mop of familiar red hair and eyes like melting toffee.
    the old man answered her gruffly. 'They found it and brought it home with them. As if there weren't enough dogs underfoot without bringing puppies back here!'
    'I found it,' the smallest child said,' a little boy with spiky ginger hair. 'I bringed it home in my spaceship.'
    'Spaceship?' asked Patience.
    'Her wheelbarrow,' interpreted the eldest boy.
    Her wheelbarrow? That was a girl?
    Patience smiled down at the smallest child, ruffling the hedgehog-like hair.
    'Where did you find it, Emmy? It must belong to someone! They'll be worried about it; we must let them know the puppy is safe.'
    'No good,' the old man grunted. 'They don't want it back. They're not daft; they jumped at the chance to get rid of it.'
    'The lady at Wayside House gave it to me!' said Emmy. 'She said nobody wanted it and I could have it, and it likes me. It wanted to come with me, it licked my face and jumped in my spaceship, but Joe says he's going to drown it. Don't let him, Patience, please...'
    Emmy began to cry, tears seeping out of her eyes as if she was