Saving Katy Gray (When Paths Meet Book 3) Read online

  She stopped when she saw the expression on Katy’s face. “I shouldn’t be telling you this should I, not when he’s your employer? I hope I haven’t embarrassed you. I don’t usually gossip but when I saw how she treated him I was so mad I’d have thrown her out of the restaurant myself if he hadn’t done what he did.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  For a moment Connie hesitated, then she shrugged. Maybe what Izzie had told her was right, even though Jack and Tony had laughed at the thought of Emlyn falling for someone as young and unsophisticated as Katy. “He threw the money for the meal onto the table before I’d even served it, and left her sitting in the middle of the restaurant on her own.”

  “Emlyn did that?” Katy’s face was pale.

  “Yes, and it isn’t like him at all. Whatever else he is, his manners are always impeccable, but he lost it that night. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so angry with anyone as he was with her.”

  “So what happened then? Did she follow him?”

  An expression of disgust flashed across Connie’s face. “Lucy! You must be joking. Once she realized that Emlyn was a lost cause she hooked up with someone who was eating alone and who’d been giving her admiring glances from the moment she walked into the restaurant. The last I saw of her was when they walked out together and got into her car.”

  While she’d been talking she had been preparing vegetables and now, with the last carrot peeled and chopped, she wiped her hands on her apron and offered to make coffee for them both. Not at all sure her legs would support her to the door, Katy shook her head.

  “Thank you but I have to get back to Emlyn’s office. I left Mrs. Brooks there, discussing floral displays with Dorothy. She’s going to make one for the reception area every week.”

  “Goodness me you are a good influence. Maybe he’ll consider redecorating the place next.”

  “I think there’s a way to go before he gets there,” Katy told her with a grin, her heart suddenly and unexpectedly freed from the misery that had gripped it all week.

  Laughing, Connie walked her to the door then, as she was about to leave, she stopped her. “You’re not really looking for a new job are you?”

  For a long moment Katy was silent, then she smiled. “No I don’t think I am.”

  * * *

  Emlyn arrived back at the office in a foul mood. Not only had he lost a minor court case thanks to some incomplete paperwork, he’d also collected a parking ticket, and to cap it all he had the headache from hell thanks to the long drinking session with his brother the previous evening.

  He winced as the door slammed shut behind him and then stopped dead and scowled at the bowl of yellow flowers in the centre of the reception desk. “I thought we’d agreed no flowers.”

  “Nope, although admittedly you might have been a touch negative about the idea,” Dorothy didn’t look up from her computer.

  He frowned in exasperation. “What does it take to get anyone to listen to me around here? I distinctly remember saying no flowers, the same as I said no coffee machine and no new coffee mugs.”

  Entirely unrepentant, Dorothy shrugged. “That’s just because you want everyone else to be as miserable as you.”

  “It has nothing to do with being miserable. It has to do with saving money.”

  “So that fancy office of yours in the city was a flower and coffee-machine free zone as well was it?”

  His scowl became even blacker. “That’s different and you know it.”

  “I don’t know any such thing. People like coffee and flowers whoever they are, but if you want to take it up with someone then go see Katy because she’s the one who organized the flowers. She’s the one who donated the coffee machine and the mugs as well. She found them when she cleared out your mother’s dining room and she thought they’d be of more use in your office than hidden away in a cupboard.”

  “So she’s been here this morning then?”

  “She has and I’m sure you’re sorry you missed her,” Dorothy gave him a beatific smile. “Your mother was here too, although now she’s gone to have lunch with Mary Tomlins, which reminds me, it’s my lunch hour too, so unless you want me for anything else, I’m off. I’ll be back at two o’clock.”

  Without waiting for an answer she picked up her bag. “There are pain-killers in my top drawer,” she told him as she opened the door.

  Without bothering to answer, he dumped his briefcase so he could search for the pills and then walked into his office still trying to find his way into the foil wrap.

  “You’ll need some water if you’re going to take those,” Katy told him from where she was perched on the window seat.

  Startled, he took a step backwards. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you,” she told him. Then her face crumpled. In an instant he was beside her, painkillers forgotten as the foil package fell to the floor.

  “What is it? Tell me what’s happened Katy. Is it my mother or has Paul said something to upset you? He told me he was going to visit you again today.”

  Smiling through her tears she shook her head. “None of that…it’s me Emlyn. I’ve been so stupid. I should have listened to you when you asked me to, instead of getting angry and walking away. Can you forgive me enough to give me…us…a second chance?”

  He stared at her. “You know I can, but why now and why here?”

  “I went to The Corley Arms today to see if your mother could help with the table displays in the restaurant and Connie told me what happened last Saturday between you and your ex-girlfriend.”

  “Connie did, but she’s always the soul of discretion, the same as Tony.” He shook his head in bewilderment.

  “So she said but not until it was too late. I think she sort of forgot you employed me and spoke to me as if I was your friend. I guess it was because we’ve eaten there together a couple of times so she got her wires crossed.”

  In two seconds she was in his arms, and then they were both sitting in his office chair. “Connie didn’t get her wires crossed at all when she thought we were friends,” he whispered in her ear. “She just doesn’t know quite how friendly we are yet!”

  * * *

  “I’m back children and I’m making coffee,” Dorothy rattled the door loudly behind her and started clashing mugs.

  Chuckling, Emlyn deposited Katy back onto the window seat beside a pile of dusty folders and kissed her before straightening his tie. “Subtle she’s not.”

  “Nor is Tony according to Connie, but they all love you Emlyn, and want to help anyway they can.”

  “Which is how you’ve managed to persuade half the village to let my mother arrange their flowers.”

  She smiled up at him as she tucked the ends of her hair back into her usual chignon and wondered anew at how, through her own stupidity, she’d nearly lost him. “You don’t really mind do you?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t mind anything as long as you are part of it. And I’ll mind even less once we can have some quality time alone together. Squashed into an office chair while we try to outdo one another in the apology stakes is not my idea of romance.”

  “Mine either,” she agreed, and then she blushed. “We did manage to do one or two other things as well though.”

  He bent down and kissed her, his bad mood and headache forgotten. “So we did. It wasn’t enough though Katy Gray. Not nearly enough."

  Chapter Eighteen

  Thanks to Dorothy’s discretion and the fact that Paul had returned to London, Katy and Emlyn were able to keep their relationship hidden from the inhabitants of Corley while they slowly learned to trust one another again. Emlyn, with his mother an easy excuse to call at Oak Lodge, did so almost daily. That he frequently didn’t leave until after midnight went entirely unremarked by the villagers because, instead of parking his car outside, he returned to his apartment at the end of each working day and changed into sports gear before jogging the short distance between his office and his mother’s house.

>   Katy, who much preferred the under-dressed more muscular version of the man she loved to the disheveled wreck in a crumpled shirt and tie whom she’d first met, teased him unmercifully.

  “I’ve heard about commitment phobia but running scared is another thing altogether,” she told him when he joined her in the garden at the end of a hot summer day.

  “The only thing I’m scared of is losing you,” he said, slipping his arms around her waist and turning her around so he could kiss her.

  “Not likely to happen,” she lifted her face to his, deliberately pushing the secret of her birth to the back of her mind so she didn’t have to think about what admitting that she knew nothing about her ancestry might do to their relationship if it became more serious. That was something she would face if and when she had to. Until then she would just enjoy the here and now, especially the few precious moments they had together most evenings once Mrs. Brooks was in bed.

  Keeping their relationship secret wasn’t a conscious decision on her part. It was just who she was. With no one to share confidences with as a child, privacy was second nature to her, and because she knew no different she assumed it was for Emlyn too. There would be time enough to go public later. Right now, being together was enough. Besides, once his life was back on track, Emlyn might leave her behind. Although the thought made her heart ache she thought she would be able to bear it provided he was honest with her. She could forgive anything except that and she told him so, often, and then let him kiss her into a sense of security as he protested that he loved her too much to ever hurt her again.

  Emlyn’s reasons for secrecy were much more complicated. After so many months of misery all he wanted to do was to hold Katy close and pretend that everything in his life was fine, and he wasn’t prepared to jeopardize it by talking about her to his friends because he knew what they would say. Jack would tell him that his feelings were merely a reaction to months of loneliness and that the sooner he returned to the city, and city girls, the better, and Tony would agree.

  Izzie and Connie might too, even though they obviously liked Katy, so he wasn’t prepared to expose her to anyone’s cynicism until he was surer of how she felt about him. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe the words she whispered late at night when they kissed goodbye, it was because she knew so little about men, and about him in particular. He’d had a lot more sexual conquests in the ten years she had still been growing up than he was ever going to tell her about, so he wasn’t about to let his friends loose with the truth of his reputation until he was confident Katy could deal with it.

  Dismissing it from his mind as he contemplated the evening ahead of them, he smiled down at her. “I spoke to Mum on my way in. She’s in one of her hostess moods this evening so she’s asked me to fetch you in for drinks and canapés.”

  “Canapés!”

  He grinned. “You’d be surprised. Once upon a time chez Brooks was the place to be seen in Corley.”

  As he spoke his cell phone rang. Glancing at the caller ID he answered it. “Paul. Where are you?”

  Katy could hear his brother’s voice at the other end although she couldn’t decipher the words. She could tell from Emlyn’s face that it was good news though, something he confirmed as soon as he cut the call.

  “Paul’s found Dad. Well he’s found out where he is although he hasn’t actually made contact yet. He wants me to go with him.”

  She nodded, glad that Paul wanted to share the responsibility. Their late night drinking session seemed to have rekindled a brotherly love that both of them had almost forgotten, and it had helped Emlyn to see, too, that far from being the cause of all his family’s problems, he was the glue that held them together. All he had to do now was to let Paul and Alice share in the decision-making.

  “Where is he…your father I mean, not Paul?”

  “In London, as we suspected. Paul remembered Dad once mentioning a friend who worked in Harley Street, so he started there. I’d forgotten all about him.”

  “So he hasn’t been as devious as you thought after all, he’s just gone to ground somewhere, with friends.”

  “Yes, but I wish he hadn’t.”

  Katy slipped her arms around him. “You will tell him how much your mother needs him, won’t you?” she asked as they walked towards the house.

  He nodded, his face somber. “I will as long as you promise to be here to help her cope with his illness.”

  She squeezed his arm. “You know I will be and I promise it’ll be fine.”

  * * *

  Later, however, staring at the moon through her bedroom window as she tried to convince herself that she was tired enough to sleep, Katy knew she hadn’t been entirely truthful. The memory of her own father’s death was still raw after three years, and not all of that was to do with what she had found out when she went through his papers. As for her mother’s death, she hadn’t let herself think about that from the moment she died.

  Now though, knowing that Emlyn was going to have to go through a similar experience, she dragged her memories out into the open and examined them while the stars played hide n’ seek with the clouds scudding across the sky and the trees cast long shadows across the lawn.

  What she discovered surprised her. Something had happened since she arrived in Corley. While she hadn’t been looking, her anger had disappeared. Now all she could remember was how much her parents had loved her, and suddenly the fact they’d hidden the truth of her birth from her didn’t seem very important compared to that. Nor did her father’s lack of financial acuity, not now Emlyn had explained it. Instead she just felt sad he had died knowing he hadn’t achieved his dream.

  And what about you? Are you sad about that too or have you got a different dream? The little voice inside her head that she spent so much time ignoring, managed to break through as she thought about her own life and the plans she had once had. With an angry shake of the head she shut it out. Time enough for that later. Right now she had a living to earn.

  * * *

  While Emlyn caught up with his paperwork and then went to London to find his father and persuade him to return home, Katy concentrated on Penny Brooks. Knowing it was essential to build some sort of routine into a life that was only just beginning to emerge from the chaos of her broken mind, she organized their weekly diary with the precision of an army commander. Monday was when they chose flowers from the garden and took them into Emlyn’s office. It was also the day she had lunch with Mary Tomlins, an arrangement that meant that Katy had a free afternoon.

  On Fridays they did the table displays for The Corley Arms, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays they visited Corley Hall where Penny worked alongside Bob Mickleson while Katy divided her time between Izzie and, increasingly, Luke and the aviary. Prompted by Jack, he had come to find her when it was time to feed the birds, and they had soon become firm friends.

  “How come you’re so favored?” Izzie asked her on her fourth visit.

  Katy shrugged. “I think it has something to do with my ability to accurately measure out birdseed. I’m also familiar with a lot of the supplements he uses thanks to the hours I spent helping my dad with his budgerigars.”

  “Well I must say I’m impressed, and Jack is too. He says he heard you talking together the other day and you sounded almost as knowledgeable as Luke.”

  Katy grinned at her. “We must have been talking about budgies then because I’m a dummy when it comes to the more exotic birds.”

  “If you mean the peacocks then anything you can do to persuade him to get rid of them would earn you brown points from me…nasty, screechy things.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do at five o’clock in the morning but I know I’m onto a lost cause because Jack will never agree. He says they define the spirit of Corley Hall or some such nonsense. Apparently they’ve always been here apart from the few years when it was falling apart from neglect. There are even peacock feathers in the family coat of arms, and they’re also depicted on the crest of
an ancient helmet that belonged to one of his ancestors generations ago.”

  “That’s because a display of peacock feathers carried a message of aggression onto the battlefield as well as one of nobility and pride.”

  Izzie raised her eyebrows in surprise. “How come you know so much about it?”

  Flushing slightly, Katy admitted that she loved history. “Once upon a time I dreamed of being a museum curator,” she said, laughing. “I know that sounds incredibly nerdy but I became hooked when I was about twelve and watched a TV series that featured various museums around the country.”

  “So what happened to your dream then?”

  “My mother became very ill and well, you know how it is…” her voice trailed off.

  Izzie didn’t. She’d fought tooth and nail for her own career against great odds and she couldn’t imagine what it must be like to do a job day after day when really all the time you wanted to do something else entirely. She didn’t say so though. Instead she merely nodded and then suggested that Katy join a tour of the Hall so she could see the relics of Jack’s family history.

  “Maybe another time,” Katy told her, gathering up her belongings preparatory to going home and wondering, as she did so, what had prompted her to share something so private that it had remained locked inside her ever since she could remember. From the terrible day her mother’s illness had been diagnosed she had abandoned all thought of a career that would take her away from home and had agreed to train as a nurse instead so that she could live locally as well as help her father.

  “In that case at least come down to the gallery and see Luke’s paintings. You can collect Penny afterwards. Jack won’t mind if she stays for an extra half an hour or so.”

  Reluctantly Katy complied. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to visit the Art Centre, it was more that she wasn’t sure how much more time she could spend with Izzie without blurting out something about Emlyn that would give away how she felt about him. Izzie, however, appeared to be entirely oblivious as she tucked her arm into Katy’s and led her across the rolling lawns to a modern building tucked into a fold in the hills.