Restoring Grace (52 page)

‘You're spoiling me. If we go out I insist on
paying. It's my turn.’

He put his hand on her cheek and kissed her.
'No,' he
said firmly, making her blush
again. 'Now come upstairs.
Let me show you the guest suite.’

The guest suite was gorgeous and Flynn's pride
in it
was obvious. It consisted of a bedroom
containing a double
bed the size of a patio and a bathroom with a
walk-in
shower and free-standing bath. There
was a little dressing
room next to
it, which didn't seem to have much purpose,
but was divinely pretty. A
little balloon-backed chair covered in toile de Jouy fabric stood in the
corner.

‘This is delightful! Did you choose all the
colours and materials yourself?’

He shook his head. 'I employed a very talented,
very expensive, interior designer. She did a good job.'

‘She certainly did,' said Grace, aware of a
shadow of jealousy. 'She has excellent taste.'

‘
So have I. And I do appreciate the good things
in life.’

This time he put his arms
round her and kissed her on
the lips, long and hard. When he let
her go, Grace was breathless, and (she admitted reluctantly to herself),
perfectly ready to sully the pure white bedspread with a little impure passion.

When she was alone in the
house, she went back down
stairs. Now
Flynn was gone, her anxiety about how to
pay for the dry-rot treatment came flooding back.
Distracted,
she sorted through her post without really seeing it, until something caught
her eye. And so, to her
surprise, and
immense satisfaction, Grace had solved the
problem before Flynn came back to take her out to lunch.
Freedom
from this worry, even if it was only for a short time, made her quite skittish.

‘
I do love
being spoilt,' she said when he opened the
car door for her and she got
in.

‘
If I wasn't
so hungry I'd spoil you properly,' he
growled,
before sublimating his desires by firing the
engine of his powerful car
and setting off far too fast.

*

In Bath things were going quite well for Ellie.
She had dumped her bag in the room she had slept in before, shook out the duvet
and made it look as comfortable as
possible.
Then she washed up and hoovered all the rooms
except the studio. It took a bit of courage to knock at the
door
and go and speak to Ran, but she managed it.

‘Anything I can do for you in here?' She looked
across at the view, wondering when the windows had last been
cleaned. 'Run round with the vac? Do the windows?
Give
the painting on the easel a good scrub with bleach and soda
crystals?’

He completely ignored this
pleasantry. 'Have you made
an appointment to see your doctor?'

‘
No - I I. .
.' she began. Her flippancy evaporated,
leaving her feeling caught out
and guilty, although she had no reason to.

‘
Do it now.
One of the reasons you came to stay was
so you could see your doctor.
Then I'll let you see what I'm doing here,' he added, as if she needed a reward.

Ellie grinned. She did like Ran. She knew she
fancied him rotten, but the liking part was a pleasant surprise.
In the time it took her to go to the telephone and
haul
out the directory she wondered if she'd fallen for him
because, deep down and well hidden, he was a nice
guy,
but reluctantly decided not. She was probably perfectly
capable of falling in love with a toad if he was
as sexy
and attractive as Ran. Perhaps her hormones were in a funny
state. But how did he feel about her? Was he just being kind, or did he fancy
her just a bit? The receptionist told her that if she could get to the
surgery in fifteen minutes, her doctor could see
her then.
She'd had a cancellation. 'Oh, and if you think you're
pregnant, bring a urine sample,' she added.

As Ellie knew she was
pregnant, she was in the kitchen,
going through a
cupboard looking for a nearly empty jam
jar when
Ran came in. 'I've got to go immediately. She's had a cancellation. Are you
ever going to eat the rest of this Apricot Conserve with Brandy and Almonds? I
need
the jar and it's gone off anyway. I
must clear your
cupboards out. They're in a terrible state.'

‘Help yourself.'

‘
And would
you like me to do a bit of shopping after
I've been to the doctor's? You've got no bread, hardly any
milk
and no Marmite.'

‘I don't like Marmite.'

‘
But I do.
And the washing-up liquid's nearly all gone.'
She tipped the remaining
jam into the bin and started washing the jar. 'God, I'm going to be late!'

‘What do you need the jam jar for?'

‘
Don't ask, or use your imagination.' She
flapped an irritated hand at him.

‘
So, when do you think you conceived?' said the doctor,
when she'd finished putting cold hands on Ellie's
stomach.

‘
I'm not
exactly sure. It wasn't planned. Before
Christmas?' she said, blushing,
although she wasn't remotely ashamed.

‘I think you'd better have a scan, to find out
exactly
how pregnant you are. But on the
whole you're very well,
your blood
pressure's fine. You did well to bring a
sample.'

‘Your receptionist told me I should when I said
I was pregnant, making the appointment.’

The doctor laughed. 'She's well trained. And
you've
answered all the questions
correctly: you don't smoke or
drink too much.'

‘
And I don't eat soft cheese or empty cat-litter
trays.'

‘Well done.
You've been reading the books, too.'

‘Well, I
haven't,' Ellie confessed, 'but I will now.'

‘
And I'll arrange a
scan for you as soon as possible and
an
appointment to see the midwife. Where would you
like to have the baby?’

Ellie was shocked. She hadn't actually thought
about having the baby; being pregnant seemed enough to cope with.

‘
Well, here,
I suppose. Or perhaps a home birth?' Would
Luckenham House still be full
of toxic chemicals by the autumn?

‘
Well, I
can't prevent you from having that, but I would
advise against it.
There's an awful lot of blood, and
although
it wouldn't amount to much in quantity, it can
seem a bit shocking for the onlookers and it's much harder
for us if anything goes wrong. Lighting's always a
bit of
a problem too, unless your
house has arc lights, of course.
Will you want your partner with you?'

‘
Um. I haven't got a partner or arc lights.
Perhaps I'd better have the baby in hospital after all.’

The doctor patted her hand. 'That would be
sensible.
Now, have I got all your details
down correctly? Address?
Telephone number? Things like that? We'll get
in touch as soon as an appointment for a scan comes through.'

‘
Well, I'm
not still at my old address. In fact, I've sort
of got two addresses . .

The doctor could not have been kinder. Nothing
she said or did should have made Ellie feel uncomfortable, and yet somehow, she
did. It was, she decided as she walked back to the car, because of her feelings
for Ran.
She wanted to say she was living
at his address, and, for
a few days, she was. But it was a very
temporary partnership and they were linked only by very ephemeral things like
Marmite and washing-up liquid. She sighed
deeply
as she negotiated her car out of the parking space
and headed for the
supermarket. What should she cook for him tonight? she wondered. What would
make him fall head over heels in love with her? Nothing that came out of an
oven, she accepted sadly, but it wouldn't stop her trying.

‘
How did you get on?' asked Ran as Ellie hauled
bags of shopping into the house. He took the bags from her as she did so.

‘Fine. I'm
well. I'm going to have a scan, and I've
bought
some lovely steak for supper. It was on offer,' she
added.

‘Good. I'm
sure you should eat red meat when you're pregnant.'

‘You seem to
know a lot about it.'

‘
Sisters,' he said, as if that explained everything. 'And
I'm glad you're well, because I want you to go to London tomorrow, to do a
little research.’

Ellie cooked steak, sauté
potatoes and wilted spinach.
It was, she
was forced to confess, extremely good. She had
taken
immense pains with it, as it was their
first supper
together,
and she was privately very smug about the outcome. For pudding she'd stewed
some apricots and
prunes, added rum to the
syrup and was going to serve
it hot,
with mascarpone cheese mixed with crème fraiche.

She wasn't quite sure if mascarpone counted as
soft
cheese or not with regard to its
undesirability for pregnant
women, so she wasn't planning to eat very
much of it
herself, but she hoped Ran liked
it. He had opened a bottle
of wine to eat with the steak, but she had
refused it.

‘
I haven't eaten
a steak as good as this since I was last in France,' said Ran, spearing a piece
of meat which was
perfectly pink in the middle and slightly charred on
the outside.

Ellie blushed and awarded herself a point. 'I
learnt to
cook steak while I was an au pair
in France. And I suppose
that's when I learnt to like food, really. I'm
glad you approve. Have some potatoes.’

Ran picked up the dish and shovelled half of
them on
to his plate. 'You must make sure
you take the money for
all this out of the petty cash box.'

‘No! This is on me, to thank you for having
me.'

‘Ellie, you're already doing quite a lot to
thank me for
having you, you don't have to
pay for the food as well.
It would defeat the object of me paying you to
be my apprentice.'

‘My parents gave me some money when I told them
I
was pregnant.' Quite why Ellie felt
obliged to tell him
this, she didn't know. Maybe so he'd know she wasn't
entirely dependent on his largesse.

‘Why? Did they want you to have an abortion?'
He frowned.

‘Oh no. At least, they didn't say so. They just
didn't want to offer to have me at home. My mother can't face the thought of
being a grandmother just yet and the
thought
of a baby, or worse a toddler, in that house, was
enough to give all of
us nightmares.'

‘Oh. So Grace took you in?'

‘
It wasn't quite like
that. She wanted the company. It's
been very lonely for her since her husband left.'

‘It must
have been, in that great big house all on her own.'

‘And then
there's Demi, the one Grace and Flynn had to go and rescue the other night.'

‘
Where does she fit in?'

‘She's Grace's ex-stepdaughter.'

‘Ah.'

‘She doesn't get on with her mother.'

‘So where is she now? Staying with Grace and
Flynn?'

‘
No.' Ellie
grinned a little sheepishly. 'With her mother.
I told her she had to.
Grace and Flynn need space to be on their own.' She frowned and looked at her
watch. 'I wonder what they're doing?'

‘
Eating a meal, possibly. Do Grace and Flynn
know they're being manipulated?'

‘
I shouldn't think so. I didn't say anything to
them,
only to Demi.'

‘And you
don't think that Flynn and Grace can sort their own lives out without help from
you?’

He obviously disapproved of her matchmaking,
probably because he'd hate it himself. 'I'm not helping them,
or manipulating them, I'm just making the
circumstances
more . .