Seduction Never Lies Read Online Free PDF Page A

months of village life before he was looking for the shortest route back to the fast lane.
    Well, she could survive that long. It was enduring the rest of this visit which would prove tricky.
    Oh, let it be over soon, she whispered inwardly, and with unwonted vehemence.
    But her father was speaking, driving another nail into her coffin. ‘I’ve asked Jago to stay for lunch, darling. I hope that’s all right.’
    ‘It’s cold chicken and salad,’ she said tautly, groaning silently. ‘I’m not sure there’s enough to go round.’
    ‘But I thought we were having macaroni cheese,’ he said. ‘I saw it in the fridge when I got the beer.’
    And so there was. One of Dad’s all-time Saturday favourites. She’d got up specially to prepare it in advance.
    ‘I’d planned that for supper,’ she lied.
    ‘Oh.’ He looked faintly puzzled. ‘I thought you’d be seeing Patrick tonight.’
    ‘Well, no,’ she said. ‘His mother’s had some bad news, so he’s spending the evening with her.’
    ‘Ah,’ he said, and paused. ‘All the same, let’s have the macaroni now. It won’t take long to cook.’
    ‘Dad.’ She tried to laugh. ‘I’m sure Mr Marsh can do better for himself than very ordinary pasta in our kitchen.’
    ‘Better than a home-cooked meal in good company?’ her antagonist queried softly. ‘It sounds wonderful. As long as it isn’t too much trouble,’ he added, courteously.
    Tavy remembered an old Agatha Christie she’d read years ago— The Murder at the Vicarage . She felt like creating a real-life sequel.
    Hastily, she counted to ten. ‘Why don’t you both have another beer in the garden,’ she forced herself to suggest. ‘I—I’ll call when it’s ready.’
    While the oven was heating, she mixed breadcrumbs with Parmesan and scattered them across the top of the pasta, found and opened a jar of plums she’d bottled the previous autumn to have with ice cream as dessert, and made a simple dressing for the salad.
    We’ll have to eat the chicken tonight, she told herself grimly as she put the earthenware dish into the oven, then turned away to lay the table.
    All the domestic stuff she could do on autopilot, which was just as well when her mind seemed to have gone into free fall.
    Under normal circumstances, she’d have run upstairs to take off what she regarded without pleasure as her ‘school uniform’, change into shorts and maybe a sun-top, and release her hair from its clasp at the nape of her neck. Preparation for a lazy afternoon under the chestnut tree in the garden—with a book and the odd bout of weeding thrown in.
    But there was nothing usual about today, and it seemed infinitely safer to stay as she was. To show this interloper that the girl he’d surprised yesterday was a fantasy.
    And to demonstrate that this was the real Octavia Denison—efficient, hard-working, responsible and mature. The Vicar’s daughter and therefore the last person in the world to go swimming naked in someone else’s lake.
    Except that she had done so, and altering her outer image wasn’t going to change a thing as far as he was concerned. Any more than his lightening of his appearance today had affected her initial impression of him.
    She sighed. Her father was a darling but she often wished he was warier with strangers. That he wouldn’t go more than halfway to meet them, with no better foundation for his trust than instinct. Something that had let him down more than once in the past.
    Well, she would be cautious for him where Jago Marsh was concerned. In fact, constantly on her guard.
    She didn’t know much about his former band Descent but could recall enough to glean the social niceties had not been a priority with them.
    Top of her own agenda, however, would be to find out more, because forewarned would indeed be forearmed.
    He’s playing some unpleasant game with us, she told herself restively. He has to be, only Dad can’t see it.
    Although she suspected it was that faith in the