The Key Read Online Free PDF Page A

he’d get what I’d meant. He’d mentioned those clothes on the phone, and maybe those women were exactly whom he wanted to avoid.
    “Jeans and T-shirts are good,” he said. “The reason I said about those is because every woman in my past has been a power-suit person. Or the kind who loved diamonds more than simple pleasures such as each of us reading a book in the evenings. Parties, a lot of them wanted parties or to be taken out to dinner. I prefer the simple pleasures. Someone to have fun with in a different way. At home.”
    “That is good,” I said, eyeing a house that was set back from the road behind high metal gates with posh lights mounted on every post. “I like to stay in, too. Tonight was an exception to my rule. I had to come out in order to meet you—to go out in order to meet anyone at all.”
    “I see. So you’re a homebody, then?”
    “Oh, indeed. I do not like parties—they are full of drunk people with no manners. I do not like going out to dinner because I tend to slop my food over myself and am quite an embarrassing eating companion. I do not like diamonds as I do not see the point in them. They are just there to show people how much money you have. That is my opinion, anyway.”
    “I like your opinions.” He stopped us outside an enormous house, set back like the other one. “Ah, here we are.” He poked a few buttons on an electronic keypad on one of the thicker gate posts.
    “You live here?” I asked, hating the fact that my jaw had a mind of its own and was intent on smacking onto the pavement.
    “I do.”
    “Merde!” That was the only French swear word I knew. “I do not know how you rattle around in such a place by yourself. I would not want to live here.”
    “You wouldn’t? Other than the rattling around, why not?”
    “It is ostentatious. It is excessive. Unless you have one million children, what do you need all this space for?”
    “Chantal?”
    “Yes?” I said, looking up at him.
    “I like you. I really, really like you.”

Chapter Four
     
     
     
    “That is lovely,” I said, Jane Smith holding back tears, Chantal Rossi blinking at him in a bid to make him think I was batting my eyelashes like some sexy little siren. “You do not mind what I said about your home?”
    “Not in the least.” He glanced away as the gates swung open. “I prefer honesty—and you’re right. I don’t need a place this big. I got caught up in showing what I’d made of myself, when really, that isn’t important.” He cupped my elbow. “This way.”
    I stepped onto his driveway, looking ahead at a house that could only be described as a mini mansion. Oh, you had to have been born on the right side of the tracks to live there, surely. I wondered whether he’d indeed been born into a well-to-do family or if he’d earned his money. From what he’d just said I could only assume the latter, otherwise, if he’d been raised in privileged surroundings, why would he need to prove what he’d made of himself? Unless he’d shirked the family money and had gone out to show the world he could find his own way, earn his own money to continue the lifestyle he was accustomed to.
    Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. A large dwelling filled with all manner of pointless things wasn’t my idea of how life should be led. I preferred to have only what I needed and had realised, much to my upset and loneliness, that being loved was far more important than the size of your rooms or what they contained.
    He pressed another code into a keypad on the inside of the post, waited a second for the gates to start closing, then steered me up the drive.
    “This is a very nice house,” I said, paying attention to the pillars on the corners of the top step of a stone flight, at the windows that had to be as tall as he was. “But it is ridiculous. I do not mean to belittle why you bought it, I can understand your reasoning, but you have much to learn about life, do you not think?”
    “I don’t think,