She’s keen to buy into the business. As a full partner.’
‘Chris, that woman set fire to your car! You can’t seriously be thinking about taking her back?’
‘Carol has the money
right here
.’
‘Are you insane?’
‘Shh . . . I’m here on the beach with her.’
‘No. Damn well no!’
‘Tom—’
‘That lunatic woman will ruin everything!’ Tom looked up. Nicola stood no more than ten paces from him. He hadn’t even noticed her appear.
When he lifted the phone from his ear so she could see that he was taking a call, she gave an
I see
gesture and pantomimed putting her fingers in her ears before backing away amongst the apple trees.
He turned his attention back to the call that threatened to ruin his and Chris’s dive-school plans. ‘Chris!’ he bellowed, not caring whether Carol on the Greek beach, or Nicola in the orchard could hear. ‘Chris. We promised each other not to get seriously involved with girlfriends until we’d got the business up and running. Don’t agree anything with Carol. Nothing at all! I’ll call you tomorrow after I’ve talked with my dad.’
He switched off the phone, savagely kicked the heads off a clutch of dandelions, then went to find Nicola.
‘Trouble?’ she asked.
‘Seventeen thousand dollar trouble,’ he growled.
‘Sorry to hear it.’ She smiled.
The smile made him feel better. What was it that his teacher had said about girls with glamour? Witchcraft? The power to cast spells? Her smile was one of the nice spells. His anger at the menacing reappearance of Chris’s old flame evaporated.
Nicola’s fair hair spilled down over a T-shirt that was the colour of burnt orange. With that, she wore a flowing white skirt. Once more he noticed the way her delicate toes peeked from under the straps of her sandals. There was something fetching about those toes. He imagined Nicola’s bare feet slipping into cool pond water. The image quickened his heartbeat. Those bare toes were downright sexy.
‘This way’s the quickest.’ She headed for the bottom of the garden.
‘That’s where you parked your car?’
‘Car? We’re walking.’
‘We could go in mine.’
‘Not to my house. No roads go there.’ Smiling, she led the way.
‘I didn’t know there were any other houses nearby.’
‘You probably didn’t notice. What with living in that big mansion.’
‘So, where are you taking me?’
‘To a mysterious realm all of our own.’ Her tone was light and somehow pleasantly enticing. ‘We do things differently there. The normal laws of the universe don’t apply.’
He politely laughed at her joke. ‘OK, take me to fairyland.’
‘Be warned, Tom Westonby. You’ll pass the point of no return. Your world will never, ever be the same again.’
Nicola moved along the woodland path, almost skipping rather than walking.
Tom followed. He’d been amused by her playful banter about mysterious realms. In fact, this suddenly did seem a magical place. Birdsong filled the forest. The sun drove shafts of light down through the branches, so the place resembled a stage, complete with spotlights ready to illuminate glamorous actors the instant they appeared. Warm air enfolded him in a comforting embrace. Wild flowers scented the air. Above all, he was in the company of a beautiful woman, with bright, shining eyes.
What could be better than this?
Only, that’s the precise moment Tom’s world went wrong. There was that ominous feeling you get when forbidding storm-clouds kill a blue sky. The sunshine vanished. The forest path became so dark that he could barely see Nicola. The temperature plunged. A coldness emerged from the earth. Ice worked its way into his veins. There was an awful sensation, as if snow was being tightly packed around his heart.
Then the birdsong stopped.
In that silent wilderness, there was some
thing
present. A sense that a huge, malignant spirit was focusing all its hatred on him, Tom Westonby. Even though he could see nobody other