"Good to have you back," Ted Hobson said, shaking hands, his eyes searching Ritchie's face, noting the spare austerity of the features, the tension of mouth and jaw, the hard glitter of the eyes. "How are you, Ritchie?" he asked anxiously, trying to sound cheerful. "You look pretty fit to me. Lost weight, but it suits you."
"I'm okay." Ritchie got into the car and Ted slid behind the wheel, started the engine again.
"Megan has cooked something extra-special for lunch, we hoped you'd eat it with us," he said, uncertainly watching Ritchie in the mirror above his head. The hard face warmed slightly. "That's very good of you both, but if you don't mind I'd like to get home. Can I take a rain-check on the lunch? And give my love to Megan. I shall look forward to seeing something of her very soon. But today I want to talk to the detective agency I've been using. They think they may have picked up a new trail, they may have found her."
Ted's eyes grew more worried. "Look, I may be speaking out of turn, but I have to say this. Don't go looking for her, Ritchie. If you'd never met her, none of it would have happened. Now you're out and you can get on with your life again, put it all behind you. Why don't you be sensible and just forget you ever met her?"
Ritchie stared out of the window, his face in profile, darkly set, his grey eyes smouldering. "Forget her? No, Ted." His voice was low, harsh, barely audible. "I've been waiting to catch up with her for three years and I'm going to find her if it takes me the rest of my life!"
-----
Linzi was mowing the lawn when she heard a car driving along the unmade road which led to the cottage. Stiffening, she switched off the electric mower and peered through the tall hedge of elder, hawthorn and wild rose, her nerves on edge until she recognised Gareth's car. He parked, and got a large cardboard box out of the boot, piled high with groceries for her, she was glad to see. She had almost run out of various necessities.
She met Gareth at the gate, opened it for him, leaning over to kiss his cheek. "Nice to have some company for a change! Isn't it a gorgeous day for early May? What have you bought me?"
"Mum did the shopping." His eyes searched her face. "You okay? Not too lonely out here?"
"It's quite peaceful, actually. I'm doing lots of reading and listening to music. I'm not lonely but I do miss you and your mother, and Paul. I wouldn't like to spend too long here. I suppose human beings were meant to be gregarious."
"Of course they are, and with luck you should be able to come home very soon." Gareth said cheerfully.
It was Aunt Ella who, typically, had come up with the solution to Linzi's problem. An isolated little cottage on the edge of a Warwickshire wood with no neighbours and only a narrow winding track leading to it. It be longed to a friend of hers who was now living in Florida a lot of the year but who came back for a few months in the summer, when Florida's heat became intoreable for her and kept her old home in Warwickshire in order to have a base in England. Aunt Ella had rung her in Miami, asked if Linzi could borrow it, and been given a warm response.
"As long as she looks after the place she's welcome to stay as long as she likes, rent free. I'll be glad to have the cottage lived in for a while. I don't like taking tenants normally, because when I have, in the past, they've made off with everything portable, but I know I can trust someone from your family, Ella!"
Megan had rung a few days later on to warn that Ritchie had definitely been released, and Linzi had moved immediately to the cottage.
"I haven't told him I've seen you," Megan assured her on the phone, but Linzi had been gently sceptical. She knew Megan.
YOU ARE READING
Guilty Love (Completed)
Romansa"Everything I did was for you!" "For me? You killed my husband for me? Do you really think I wanted him dead? I loved him!" It was an obsessive passion. It had gone too far, and Linzi's husband had died as a result of it. Ritchie Calhoun was sexy an...
