The Complete Red-Hot Collection. Kelly HunterЧитать онлайн книгу.

       CHAPTER ONE

      ROWAN FARRINGDON DREADED Sunday dinners with her parents. The tradition was a new one, instated exactly one month after her parents had retired and bought themselves a gleaming glory of a house that has all the showiness of a museum and no warmth whatsoever. Even the floral arrangements were formal.

      She’d made a mistake two months ago, when she’d turned up with an armful of scented overblown cream- and butter-coloured roses and had had them relegated to the laundry sink—doubtless to be tossed out at her mother’s earliest convenience.

      She hadn’t made that mistake again.

      For some reason her mother loved this house, and insisted that Rowan—as her only child and heir—love the house as well.

       Never going to happen.

      Rowan’s hurried ‘I’m well set up already, Mum. Sell the house. Spend every last penny you have before you go, I really won’t mind …’ probably hadn’t been the most politically sensible thought ever voiced, but Rowan had meant every word of it.

      To say that Rowan and her mother neither knew nor understood each other was something of an understatement.

      Four people graced the enormous round table at this particular evening’s formal dinner. Rowan’s mother, father, grandfather, and herself. Presumably the round table gave the impression that everyone sitting at it was of equal importance, but the actual conversation around the table told a different story.

      Rowan shared a glance with her grandfather as her father launched into yet another monologue that revolved around dining with dignitaries and very important people she’d never heard of. Both her parents had been Army in her younger years, and had made the switch to foreign ambassador postings later on. They’d led the expat life for most of their lives, while Rowan had been largely left behind with her grandfather. His job hadn’t exactly been geared towards the raising of children either—he’d been an Army general—but he’d never once left her behind and she loved him all the more for it.

      Rowan’s phone buzzed once from its pocket in her handbag, sitting on the side table where she’d put it when she arrived, and Rowan winced. She knew what was coming.

      ‘I thought I asked you to turn that off?’ her mother told her coolly, her almond-brown eyes hard with displeasure.

      People often thought brown eyes were soft, liquid and lovely.

      Not all of them.

      ‘You know I can’t.’ Rowan rose. ‘Excuse me. I have to take that.’

      She took her phone and the information on it out into the hall and returned a minute or so later. She crossed to her bag and slung it over her shoulder.

      ‘You’re leaving?’ Her mother’s voice was flat with accusation rather than disappointment.

      Rowan nodded.

      ‘Trouble?’ asked her grandfather.

      ‘I’m covering for one of the other directors this week, while he’s out of the country. One of his agents has just emerged from deep cover. We’re bringing him in.’

      ‘We barely see you any more,’ her mother offered next—never mind that before they’d retired they’d barely seen her at all.

      ‘You barely saw her during her childhood,’ her grandfather told his daughter bluntly. ‘At least when Rowan leaves at a moment’s notice she gives us an explanation.’

      There was enough truth in those words to make her mother’s lips draw tight. Enough of a sting in them to make Rowan’s memories clamour for attention.

      ‘But it’s my birthday,’ Rowan had once said to her mother as her parents had headed out through the door, their travel bags rolling behind them like obedient pets. ‘Grandfather made cake. He made it for us.’

      ‘I’m sorry, dear,’ her mother had said. ‘Needs must.’

      ‘But you’ve only been here one day,’ she’d said to her father once, and had received a stern lecture on tolerance and duty for her efforts.

      ‘Where are you going?’

      She’d stopped asking that one. To this day she didn’t think she’d ever received a truthful answer. The take-home message had always been that they were going somewhere important and that Rowan wasn’t welcome.

      ‘You need to toughen up,’ her parents had told her over and over—and toughen up she had.

      That her mother now wanted a different type of relationship with her only child concerned Rowan not at all.

      ‘I’m sorry. I have to go.’

      ‘Your grandfather’s not getting any younger, Rowan. You could do more for him.’

      Her mother’s salvo had been designed to hurt, but Rowan just smiled politely and let it land on barren ground somewhere left of its target. Rowan saw her grandfather at least twice a week, and called him every other day and then some.

      Not that her mother knew that.

      Nor did Rowan feel the urge to enlighten her.

      ‘You’d like this agent who’s just arrived,’ she told her grandfather, for she knew he’d be interested. ‘He’s been causing utter mayhem with very limited resources.’

      ‘Is he ex-Army?’

      ‘No, he’s one of ours from the ground up. Very creative.’

      Ten to one that the next time she called her grandfather he’d know who she was talking about. He might be long retired, but he still had impressive contacts.

      ‘Yes, yes, Rowan. We know your job’s important,’ her mother said waspishly, and Rowan turned towards the immaculately coiffured woman who’d given birth to her.

      For a woman who’d presumably had to fight the same gender battles that Rowan still fought, her mother appeared singularly unimpressed by Rowan’s successes and the position she now held within the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.

      ‘Enjoy your meal.’ She managed a kiss for both her parents. ‘I brought apple cobbler for dessert.’

      ‘Did you make it yourself?’

      One more barb from a mother who’d barely lifted a hand in the kitchen her entire life—such was the privileged expat existence she’d led.

      ‘No. A friend of mine made it because I paid her to. It’s her grandmother’s recipe, passed down through the generations.