Read Online Darling Sweetheart by Stephen Price - Free Book Online

one ticked over, windows ominously sealed, like a robot awaiting orders.
    ‘Hey! You bin cryin’!’
    She gave him her best don’t-be-silly laugh. ‘Hay fever. I sometimes get a touch in forests. Look, I really have to go home or I’ll be even more useless tomorrow.’
    ‘Relax.’ He practically shoved her into the lead car. ‘Like I said, I just wanna show you somethin’. Gimme fifteen minutes of your precious time.’
    ‘What’s so important that I have to see it tonight?’
    He patted her hand, glanced at his watch and told Levine to step on it. She held on to her armrest as the heavy vehicle plummeted down dark, twisty roads.
    ‘So what was Tress sayin’ about me?’
    Her tummy turned cold. ‘Pardon?’
    ‘You heard.’
    ‘Why do you think Peter Tress would discuss you with me?’
    ‘Don’t go formin’ alliances, Annalise – not with anyone who isn’t me.’
    ‘Back-room politics aren’t my thing, Harry. Right now, I’m much more worried about my performance.’
    ‘You’re doin’ fine. Heck, you must be, because you got me fallin’ head-over-heels in love with you, just like script says.’ Andshe really did not know how to react to that but, fortunately, he wasn’t fishing for an answer. ‘Ah! Here we go! Told you it wasn’t far!’
    The cars entered a small village, in what seemed like a wooded valley. Rising above the houses, floodlit in orange, was an exquisite château, upright and dramatic like Beynac, but smaller and more elegant. They stopped before a portcullis-type gate. Levine aimed a hand-held control and it swung open, admitting them across a narrow stone bridge, through a
pigeonnier
– an ornate gatehouse that doubled as a dovecote – and into the courtyard of the castle proper. Discreetly and inevitably, Talbot appeared. The second car parked beside a row of stables across the yard. Two burly men sprang out and positioned themselves in the shadows by the bridge.
    ‘Well – whaddaya think?’
    She looked up at the mullioned windows and charmingly crooked walls.
    ‘It’s beautiful,’ she breathed. ‘It’s really beautiful.’
    ‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.’ He took her arm – again, that light touch – and showed her through a tall, lancet doorway into a vaulted hall that ran the entire depth of the building, for it ended in a colonnade, beyond which she could see the night again. They passed through this into a garden, central to which was a rectangular swimming pool that glowed like a slab of morning sky. Beyond that, a crenellated parapet was lined with potted orange trees. Village rooftops huddled below, as if for protection.
    ‘It gets the sun all day. So open, yet so totally private.’
    ‘It must be like swimming in heaven.’
    He laughed. ‘I haven’t tried the pool yet – my people just moved us in this afternoon.’
    ‘Frost found this for you
overnight?’
    ‘That’s why she works for me; the lady gets things done. This place is called Château Saint-Christophe – it belongs to someParisian businessman. He was due here on vacation, but he cancelled, for a fee.’
    ‘It’s stunning, but so was your last mansion.’
    He took her arm again. ‘I beg to differ, Mademoiselle!’ He whisked her back through the colonnade and up a stone staircase, where he opened a panelled door. The room he showed her into was circular and wooden-floored, obviously part of a tower. In the centre was a Louis XIV desk with matching chairs. Around the walls, cabinets contained books of all sizes, their dun spines stamped with faded gilt. Emerson pulled one out and waved it under her nose –
Essais de Michel de Montaigne
.
    ‘See? Real books!’ The room smelled exactly as an old library should: of parchment, dust and knowledge.
    ‘Please tell me you haven’t gone to all this trouble because of a single, thoughtless remark from me.’ He tossed the book aside then raised a hand to her cheek, brushing it with his fingertips.
    ‘For you, a man could go to all