Farm Fatale Read Online Free PDF

disgusting dump even," he added, swinging an arm round the flat he had so recently defended against all of Rosie's criticisms. "But we'll definitely be able to manage a deposit on something small somewhere in the country."
        Rosie nodded. It was what she had been saying for weeks.
        "And you can illustrate from anywhere. All you need is a drawing board and a few paints. All I need is a PC with email. Which the paper is supposed to be providing." He beamed at her. "Along with a mobile."
        Rosie smiled. He was repeating her own words back to her, with the exception of the paper providing the laptop and mobile. That was a surprise.
    ***

    Following the announcement of the great news, Mark rushed out and bought a bottle of wine from the liquor store while Rosie called the Shanana Tandoor Palace. They spent the evening lying happily on the floor perusing an old map book. Wrapped warmly in a sense of shared purpose, they turned the pages, laughing at names like Slack Top and Tingley Bottom. "I'll start ringing the agents tomorrow," Mark said. "We should probably buy up north. It's cheaper."
        As well as, Rosie thought, nodding enthusiastically, being the least likely place to be stuffed with the kind of people Bella puts in Insider.
        Mark caressed the Cotswolds with a lingering finger. "Plenty of time to join the Jag and paddock set once 'Green-er Pastures' takes off."
        "Is that what you're calling it?" Rosie clapped her hands. "Clever you. Mark Green . Of course."
        "Yes, and the subtitle's 'The Good Life for the Millennium.'"
        "What does that mean?" Images of digging up potatoes in the rain sprang alarmingly to Rosie's mind. "We won't have to lift leeks or anything?"
        "Course not. Just something to press all of the readers' middleclass organic buttons, that's all. I can write about what I like. Guess what the subject of the first columns going to be?"
        "Tell me."
        "The hunt for the perfect cottage, obviously."
        "Oh, Mark." She leaned over and kissed him, feeling that she had never before been so content with him. The good life after all.
        Mark's face was as happy as it was handsome, glowing with pleasure as well as the heat from the electric fire. As slowly, lingeringly, he removed his lips from hers, she saw his eyes had narrowed slightly as they always did when sex crossed his mind. Rosie inhaled the faint salty scent of his sweat; he pushed up her shirt and fingered her stiffening nipples and she gasped with anticipated pleasure. Lowering her hand to his crotch, she felt the familiar, delicious tension within her as her fingers caressed the familiar, delicious hardness.
        The phone chose that moment to shrill in the hall.
        "Damn," Mark snarled. "Who the hell rings up at this hour?"
        "You don't have to answer it." Rosie, lifting herself on her elbow, had a distinct sense of missed opportunity.
        "Might be work." Mark scrambled up.
        "It's Bella," he said, loping back into the sitting room almost instantly. "Says it's an emergency."
        "An emergency?" Rosie rushed to the phone, images of Simon in a coffin and Ptolemy attached to an IV racing through her mind.
        "Bella?"
        "Darling, you are there. So sorry to bother you this late."
        " Are you all right?"
        "Well, yes and no, darling."
    "What's the matter? Is it Simon?"
        "Simon?" Bella sounded astonished. "No, darling, this is a real emergency."
        "Ye-es?"
        "My assistant Lulu's gone down with the flu—or on some Guardsman, more probably—and won't be able to help me style a terribly important shoot for Insider . House in Roland Gardens, done by this incredibly hot interior designer called Basia Briggs…whom I think I mentioned the other day. Darling, I'm perfectly desperate…"
        "Bella wants me to help her shoot someone called Basia Briggs," Rosie announced to Mark as she came