Read The Pleasures of Spring for Free Online Page B

thing? The memory of him hadn’t left her for a single second since the moment of their kiss, and her libido had gone into overdrive.
    She wanted to kill him.
    Roz shook her head. ‘No, I know what I want. I’m not taking second best.’ She looked at Jake speculatively. ‘What colour is your hair when you don’t shave it?’
    He laughed. ‘Nice try. But I will find you someone. You spend too much time alone.’
    ‘I’m happy that way. I haven’t met a man I wouldn’t dump for eating Hobnobs in bed.’
    Of course, it wasn’t the whole truth. Roz knew her life was a mess. She was wanted by the police as a witness to a murder. At least that’s what they said. She didn’t trust them not to try to pin the murder on her. With her less-than-stellar record and her father’s criminal and prison record, it would be much easier to lock her up for the murder than go looking for the real killer – the man she had seen slitting the throat of an elderly French antique dealer.
    She shuddered at the memory, and at how close she had come to death.
    She had gone to pay a midnight visit to an elderly French art dealer who did a bit of jewel fencing on the side and discovered that he already had a visitor. Roz had watched from the shadows as the big blond American had fought with the old guy. She was too far away to hear all the argument, but had heard the little Frenchman threaten to tell the police something.
    Roz still flinched at the memory of the speed with which the big man had produced a lethal-looking knife and stabbed the poor man in the neck. It was done so neatly and professionally that there was almost no blood splatter, but the violence of the movement had shaken her to her bones.
    She had stuffed a fist into her mouth to avoid crying out. Later, she had found teeth marks embedded in the back of her hand, but at the time she felt nothing.
    The murderer ignored the dead man on the floor, picked the locked jewellery cases, conducted a lightning search and let himself out silently.
    Roz felt as if she hadn’t taken a single breath until he was gone.
    She crept down from her hiding place and knelt beside him. She was no medical expert, but even she could see that the glazed eyes and pale skin belonged to a corpse. There was no emergency service on earth which could help him now.
    She wasn’t religious, but she breathed a silent prayer over him before leaving quietly, hoping that he was somewhere with lots of jewels and paintings and gullible punters.
    Roz cursed her unruly tongue, which had let slip that she had witnessed the murder. She had been hoping to cut a deal with the police; trading information so that they wouldn’t send her to prison for stealing the jewel. One interview with Interpol later, she knew more than she wanted to about former Navy SEAL J. Darren Hall. He had been kicked out in disgrace and was now for hire to anyone who had more money than scruples.
    The door of the workroom opened and, as if her thoughts had conjured him, a large blond man walked into the dimly lit space, led by Olyenka.
    For a moment, terror froze her lungs. She couldn’t breathe or move. It was him. Hall had found her. Somehow he had tracked her down to the food bank, and now everyone who worked here was in danger.
    ‘You’ve never heard of me,’ she murmured to Jake, and slid down behind the row of packing boxes. The windowswere barred and Hall was in front of the door. But there was a tiny space at the back where the smokers indulged their addiction. She crouched low and scuttled for the back door as fast as possible.
    Jake, the darling, was being all managerial and official, demanding papers from the intruder.
    Roz sneaked outside into the walled-in space, took a breath and leapt for the top of the wall. It was about ten foot high, but adrenaline and desperation gave her the strength to make it. She caught the top of the wall with her fingertips and ignored the slam of her body against the bricks.
    A familiar calm