That Man Next Door Read online

  Not that he seemed to be holding it against her; all the animosity had so far been on her side, and it began to dawn on her that it might be a good idea to make a strategic withdrawal while she still could. She said no more, but hoped her dignity could stand up in the face of his rather obvious amusement.

  She gave him a meaningful look before turning into the gate of Summer House, horribly conscious, as she walked up the path to the front door, of his gaze following her and the half smile that claimed victory for the last word.

  CHAPTER II

  AUNT BESS raised the subject of James Fleming, quite a bit later in the day, and Kim wished it could have been allowed to stay unmentioned. Her aunt had eyed her heightened colour when she came in at dinner time, but she said nothing until afterwards when they all sat in the sitting-room talking.

  "Were you annoyed about something when you came in, dear?" Aunt Bess asked, and Kim smiled ruefully.

  "I'd been talking to your neighbour," she told her, "and I must say he doesn't improve with acquaintance."

  "Mr. Fleming?" Aunt Bess asked with an accuracy that betrayed knowledge, and Kim wondered if she had seen them from a window.

  "Mr. Fleming," she agreed, "the monster."

  Aunt Bess raised curious brows. "I've never really said more than good morning a couple of times, all the while he's been here," she admitted, "although I've had occasion to mention to his housekeeper or cleaner whoever she is that I thought the children shouldn't be allowed to make quite so much noise in the garden. What did he have to say that was so upsetting?"

  "I wasn't exactly upset," Kim denied, "but I was cross about the way he treats the children. I saw one of them on the sea wall, quite alone and in quite a dangerous position for such a little chap, and that — that man was so completely unconcerned about him and the fact that he'd run away that I lost my temper, I'm afraid. He's the most unnatural father I've ever seen."

  "He's certainly very unconventional," Aunt Bess allowed,

  as blandly unconcerned it seemed as James Fleming had been, though obviously curious. "I've heard the children call him by nothing but his christian name, and I'm sure it can't be good for discipline."

  "I don't imagine he's concerned enough about them to discipline them," Kim stated rashly. "He's far too conceited to bother about anyone else's feelings."

  "There doesn't appear to be a mother," Aunt Bess said, ignoring her husband's look of patient resignation when he recognised her gossip voice, as he called it.

  "She's gone according to the little one I saw," Kim told her. "Though he didn't specify where or why and I couldn't ask, naturally."

  "No, I suppose not," Aunt Bess admitted, obviously not quite seeing it that way, "but it explains why they're left with only the father. I wonder," she mused, a moment later, "whether she died or if they're just parted."

  "Could be either," Kim retorted. "He'd drive anyone to an early grave, that man."

  "Ah well," Aunt Bess sighed, "either way, he seems to have found consolation fairly quickly."

  Kim tried not to be interested, but could not keep the curious lift from her brows, and John Keeler sighed at the inevitability of it. "What your aunt means," he explained, "is that Fleming sees quite a lot of a rather stunning blonde who drives a red sports car."

  "Oh, I see." Kim tried to fit in the picture of three probably unruly children with a stunning blonde in a sports car, and failed. James Fleming, she thought, would be quite at home with both the car and the blonde, but not the children, although she had to admit he had not been unduly harsh with the little boy.

  "She often comes here," Aunt Bess enlarged, "so I imagine he must be fairly serious about her."

  "I can't quite see a glamorous blonde and three children being a very easy combination," Kim opined. "Something will probably have to give and I can guess who it will be."

  "Maybe they spend half their time with the mother and half here," Aunt Bess suggested. "They've been here about three or four months now, and he was here about the same length of time on his own before that."

  "Poor little souls," Kim sighed, rather self-righteously. "He seemed such a dear little chap, the one I saw — Lee, he was."

  "I think that's the middle one," Aunt Bess told her, and Kim nodded.

  "He said Lee was number two," she agreed.

  "Then there's one younger than him and one older," her aunt stated with certainty.

  "I feel so sorry for them," Kim declared, determinedly sentimental. Not that it really concerned her, of course, but someone should care about the children, she thought.

  Rather more nervous than she admitted, Kim set off next morning for the big house at the end of the sea wall. She had dressed in what she hoped would be considered suitable attire for a crime-writer's secretary, discarding the idea of plain navy blue, which her previous boss had preferred, in favour of something a little less severe.

  The deep green, short-sleeved dress suited her admirably — becoming without being frivolous and businesslike without being severe. Her very fair hair, naturally curly and very thick, was brushed into as neat a style as it would go, and a faint look of anxiety in her dark blue eyes made them very appealing. She had been extra careful with her makeup too, and she thought she looked as well as she had ever done.

  Aunt Bess assured her that she looked very suitable, whatever that may have implied, but Uncle John, with his unfailing courtesy, had told her that she looked lovely and that George Daley would be bound to employ her for that reason alone, if for no other.

  She had kept a careful eye on the time, hoping to arrive just right, rather than late or embarrassingly earlier, and another glance at her watch assured her that she still had five minutes until eleven o'clock and just about enough distance to cover to bring her to Linwood at the right time.

  She smoothed an anxious hand over her hair as she turned into the drive and hoped her shoes would not be thought too holiday-like for a prospective employee. They were cream-coloured and very new and, while she despaired of their remaining spotless for very long on the dusty gravel underfoot, she knew they complimented her slim ankles and rather good legs. Not that she was vain, she told herself, but a girl must make the most of her good points, and this job was very important to her in more ways than one. It would be far too humiliating to have to go back to London and admit that she had made a mistake in acting so impulsively.

  She heard a car start up as she neared the house and a moment later recognised the same blue vehicle she had encountered so disastrously at the station yesterday. It swept past her down the drive, going fast enough to lift a haze of red dust as it came, and she had time enough only to recognise James Fleming's lean, smiling face and a hand raised in salute, before she was enveloped in it.

  His passenger, she thought, as she fanned the air around her, was blonde, though she had not had time to judge her stunning or otherwise. She stood for a moment, glaring after the car and brushing the reddish dust from her dress, looking down hopelessly at her once cream shoes and won-

  dering if she was too near the house to use a handkerchief on them.

  "Miss Anders ?" Kim looked up hastily as a long shadow fell across her, the dust-laden handkerchief still clutched in one hand, her eyes wide with surprise and a little startled.

  "Er — yes," she admitted, pink-cheeked at being caught in such an inelegant position, "I'm Kim Anders."

  She straightened up and found herself face to face with a man whose face she had so often tried to visualise. "I'm George Daley," he told her, smiling understandingly at her obvious embarrassment. "My sister told me you'd be coming for coffee; she also said you were very pretty, and she's right on both counts, I'm glad to see."

  He was so entirely different from anything she had imagined that she stared at him for a moment in disbelief, unable to find words even to answer his greeting. A look that could only have been described as flirtatious approved her from head to toe, despite the effect of the dust, and he proffered a hand in greeting.

>   "I — I hope you don't mind," Kim said anxiously, finding her voice at last. "About my coming for coffee, I mean. Miss Daley said it would be all right if I came at eleven and —"

  "Of course it's all right," he assured her, still retaining his hold on her hand, "I'm delighted you could come early, and if Fay hadn't invited you I'd never have forgiven her."

  "Thank you." She thought she saw the reason now for Fay Daley's assurance that she would get the job. Evidently she knew her brother's penchant for judging by appearances and guessed he would find her attractive, and she was more than ever glad that she had taken extra care with her appearance.

  He glanced down at the shoes she had been dusting and raised a brow in query. "Were you having trouble with

  your shoes?" he asked.

  "No, not really," Kim demurred, hesitating to be too damning in her opinion of James Fleming in case he was a close friend of his. "A car drove past just now and I —well, I got rather dusty. I was just trying to clean up my shoes."

  "Oh, that would have been James Fleming," he told her. "He does have occasional touches of Jackie Stewart in his driving. I must tell him about it."

  "I'm afraid he wouldn't be very impressed," Kim told him wryly. "We've crossed swords before, only yesterday it was mud all over a new coat, today it's my shoes."

  "Oh dear." He looked down at her shoes again. "They're such pretty shoes too, and very flattering." He smiled at her and Kim realised that her prospective employer was not only charming, but dangerously so, and she smiled, a little uneasily.

  He took her into the house, which was cool and airy after the hot sun outside, through a wide hall and into a sitting-room which looked out across a long, tree-shaded garden. It was a lovely room and much more attractive than anything the outside appearance of the house promised.

  Fay Daley was already pouring coffee when they came in and she looked up with the same friendly smile Kim had seen yesterday. "Good morning, Miss Anders, it's nice to see you again."

  Kim accepted the seat she was offered and also a cup of excellent coffee, relieved to find herself so welcome. It was difficult not to feel at ease with these two nice people and she faced the coming interview with almost no misgivings now.

  "James has just smothered Miss Anders with dust," George Daley informed his sister. "She seemed worried about how she looked, but I assured her she had nothing to

  worry about on that score." That flirtatious look swept over her again and Kim could not help but smile in return, though in some men the gesture would have been offensive and earned them a frown of disapproval.

  "I'm sorry about the dust," Fay Daley told her. "It can be very bad, even after rain, it's the sand in the gravel that's the trouble and it gets into everything, especially when it's windy."

  "I'm not too bad really," Kim assured her, "but it was my shoes I was thinking about. They're a silly colour, I suppose, they'll show the dirt so badly."

  "They're very pretty," Fay commented, as her brother had done, "it's such a pity to spoil them. Didn't James see you?"

  "It seems he has it in for Miss Anders," George Daley informed her. ;Yesterday he covered her in mud." He repeated as much of the incident as Kim had told him and Fay shook her head.

  "I don't suppose he realised what he'd done either time," she said, in James Fleming's defence. "He's not usually bad-mannered like that, Miss Anders, but," she shrugged and made a grimace of explanation at Kim, "you know what men are."

  "Oh, not all of us, Fay," her brother objected. "I'd never have treated Miss Anders in such a cavalier fashion, she's far too lovely."

  He looked at Kim with such earnestness that, had it not been for the expression in his eyes, she would have believed him sincere; as it was she could afford to smile and not be thought ungracious.

  He was so unlike she had imagined him that she was still amazed that she could have been so wrong. He was a little fairer than his sister and wore his hair rather long so that it touched the collar of his shirt at the back and combined

  with a flowing cravat, worn loosely knotted, it gave him an almost poetic appearance, an effect she suspected he cultivated deliberately. His eyes were blue, a dark grey-blue that could change with the light and which would always reveal his thoughts no matter what he spoke. He was gazing at her now, rather disconcertingly obvious in his flattery.

  "George," his sister explained resignedly, "likes pretty girls, and since you come into that category, Miss Anders, I'm afraid you'll come in for your share of flattery."

  To many another man, the sisterly opinion offered so frankly, would have deterred him into embarrassed silence, but George Daley seemed quite unperturbed by it and merely smiled at Kim over his coffee cup.

  "Don't listen to Fay," he told her with a smile, "unless she tells you I have excellent taste."

  Kim found his admiration a little overpowering, but it was extremely good for her morale, and he was very attractive.

  "When can you start, Miss Anders?"

  The question so surprised Kim that she blinked for a moment uncertainly. "I — I can start any time you like, Mr. Daley," she managed at last, "but — but I came for an interview, I thought —"

  "Well, this is an interview, isn't it ?" he asked, his brows and one long hand raised in query. "You don't insist on the boss behind the desk bit, do you?"

  "No, no, of course not." Kim was a little bewildered at the way things were going, but she was nothing loath to dispense with formality if that was what he wanted. George Daley, she thought, would be quite the most unconventional employer she had ever had.

  "Fay tells me you shorten your rather charming name to Kim," he said, putting down his cup and clasping his hands between his knees, "so if you've no objections I shall

  call you Kim, O.K.?"

  "Yes, yes, of course, Mr. Daley, I don't mind in the least."

  "But I shall mind," he told her with mock severity, "if you call me Mr. Daley. I never allow beautiful women to call me anything but George. It may not be the most romantic name there is, but it's the only one I have and it hasn't been a drawback so far." The meaning behind his last words was obvious and Kim smiled, a little hesitantly.

  "You did say you were living in Woodsea, didn't you, Kim?" Fay Daley asked, to relieve some of the embarrassment her brother's manner had caused.

  Kim nodded. "I'm staying with an aunt and uncle just along the road, so it will be very convenient for coming here."

  "Very," George agreed and added with a sly smile, "although if you'd been looking for somewhere to stay we could have put you up here. We've plenty of room."

  "I'll be all right with Aunt Bess, thank you," Kim assured him, "they're quite pleased to have me."

  "So should I be," George insisted, his eyes Battering her outrageously, "but stay with your auntie if you're settled there."

  "I shall be now," Kim said. "I can send for the rest of my things."

  "Do." He studied her for a moment with that half-quizzical, entirely flattering gaze. "We shall get on marvellously," he told her. "Of course I usually prefer brunettes, but I shall make an exception in your case."

  "Thank you." She tried to sound cool and matter-of-fact and was aware of Fay Daley watching her with approval. "Shall I start tomorrow?"

  He nodded. "Whenever you like, darling, but I warn you there's a lot to catch up on. I'm not a bad boss and I shan't

  expect you to work your pretty fingers to the bone for me. All I demand is a monopoly on your spare time." His eyes flicked expressively over her face again. "I shall love having you around all day," he added, and Fay laughed.

  "George, for heaven's sake don't embarrass Kim," she warned, "or she may change her mind about coming to work for you."

  "Oh no !" He looked horrified at the prospect, an expression that did not reach his eyes. "You wouldn't do that, would you, Kim?"

  Kim laughed, despite herself. "No," she assured him, "I'll be here in the morning, Mr. Daley."

  "George," he insisted, and she inclined
her head. "George," she said obediently.

  He walked with her as far as the gates, taking her arm in easy familiarity as they went. "Do you live anywhere near James Fleming?" he asked, and Kim nodded, her expression wary.

  "Next door to him, unfortunately." She bit her lip when she realised. "Oh, I'm sorry, he's a friend of yours, isn't he? I'm sorry."

  George laughed. "No need to be," he told her. "Actually he's Eve's friend rather than mine and Fay's, although we get on fine with him."

  Kim remembered the blonde passenger in James Fleming's car and wondered if she was the same one who drove the red sports car, and whom her uncle had described as stunning.

  "Eve ?" She made no attempt to disguise her curiosity and he grinned as if he recognised it. "Another sister?"

  "No, a cousin," he said. "She honours us with her presence occasionally and she usually runs around with James when she's here."

  Kim smiled wryly. "My uncle described Mr. Fleming's

  usual companion as stunning," she ventured, wondering if she was being too confiding. There was something about the Daleys that inspired confidence.

  George smiled wryly. "You could say so," he allowed, but without enthusiasm, "but personally I prefer my roses without thorns."

  "Oh, I see."

  "I'm sure you do," he laughed. "Eve is what is graphically termed a bitch, a pseudonym I always think is rather unfair to lady dogs."

  "She's your cousin," Kim protested, but could not help smiling at his frankness.

  "She's also a very much revered fashion columnist," George told her, "but that doesn't make her any more lovable."

  "Is she?" Kim looked impressed. "Would I know her name?"

  "I should think so," he replied casually. "Eve Mellors."

  "Eve Mellors ! " She grimaced wryly. "Very well known."

  "That's our Eve," he agreed, grinning down at her as if he found her reaction amusing. "Didn't you know?" he asked.