Blowing It Read Online Free PDF Page B

on hold for a bit, darlin’.’ Sean returned to his car fantasies, oblivious to the fact that he had just punched a massive hole through Clover’s personal dream-world.
    She hesitated for a stunned moment, turning his simple, careless sentence over in her mind in case it could be changed into something encouraging. It couldn’t. One hand wriggled free from under her thigh and her index fingernail went straight to her mouth; bugger the varnish and £60 of expert shaping.
    ‘What do you mean?’ she whispered eventually. ‘On hold for how long? I thought we’d very nearly decided …’
    An impatient and not encouraging sigh came from behind the paper. He was supposed to reassure her now. He was supposed to give a bright, light laugh and say something along the lines of: ‘Oh it’s nothing, it’s just that I’d organized a little Maldives break for the two of us.’
    That might have compensated, a little.
    ‘If you must know, though there’s no reason why you really need to,’ he said at last, folding the newspaper and slapping it rather emphatically onto the table beside him, ‘if you really want to know, there’s a bit of a work downturn at the moment. It’s a bit tricky flogging mega-bucks hospitality packages to companies that are tightening the corporate belt – and right now more of them are having to do that than we like to see. Doesn’t look good, you see, sweetie. A big business providing lavish jollies for the punters can look too much like it’s squandering the shareholders’ assets.’
    ‘Oh. Yes I do see. But it’s just a blip, isn’t it? Things will get better?’ she prompted, giving him another chance to patch up her plans.
    ‘Course they will, princess. They always do, don’t they?’ He grinned at her and then stretched. ‘And anyway, if you’re so dead set on a place in the sun, maybe you could ask your folks for a sub. They should at least be good for a deposit, wouldn’t you say? Nice little nest-egg for their darling daughter? You should get your dad on his own when we go there today. After lunch. Put it to him when he’s had a few.’
    Her
parents
? Clover sat back on her hands, wondering if this suggestion of Sean’s was really so completely off the cuff or whether he’d been thinking about it for a while. She wouldn’t put it past him. And was it really a work downturn as he’d put it? Or had he found something else, something/someone expensive to lavish the credit cards on? You couldn’t, according to her favourite newspaper, run a mistress on next to nothing these days. Women weren’t so desperate as to be grateful for being someone’s second string. Being a bit on the side might be convenient for the ultra-busy (or married) who didn’t want the hassle of a proper relationship, but it seemed it required costly compensation in terms of luxury spa treatments and desirable jewellery.
    ‘I don’t know, Sean. No, really, I wouldn’t ask them. I mean, they already gave us lots of money when we got married, so we could buy this place. I’m not even sure they’ve got any left these days.’ If the run-down state of the kitchen at Holbrook House was anything to go by, her parents were practically stony. The bathrooms could do with more than a bit of paint too. Ripping out and starting again would be more like it. If they’d only let her get her hands on it, she could make it look wonderful, attic to cellar. Just because she’d given up working at Home Comforts when Sophia was born, it didn’t mean she hadn’t kept her eye in, interior-design wise.
    Sean laughed. ‘What, Mac and Lottie? Are you kidding? Don’t tell me those royalties don’t still wallop in twice a year! I bet you at any given hour of the day there’s some radio station or other in the world playing old Charisma tracks – and it all adds up. And anyway why
not
ask them? It’ll all be coming your way one day, won’t it? Yours and Sorrel’s and Ilex’s? What’s a hundred K or so on account to