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CHAPTER 5
To her chagrin, Veronica recognized that it wasn’t only Sasha who had moved so much closer and that she was halfway towards the front door now instead of on the perimeter of the portico...
When had she moved...? And how? Without knowing what she was doing...? Sasha had always had that kind of effect on her... Had... All that was in the past now, she reminded herself fiercely.
And just to ensure that Sasha knew it too, Veronica held out her hand to him and, raising her voice slightly, smiled with cool authority as she greeted him.
“Sasha, good! I’m glad you’re here. We can get straight down to work. I’ve studied the plans of the house, but I always find that it makes an enormous difference to actually walk over a property, so...”
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MY FAVORITE SCAR CHAPTER 6
“Mmm... You won’t have seen it as you drove in. It’s on the other side of the estate. I’m living there at the moment and I’ve arranged with Mrs. Elliott, who used to be my cousin’s housekeeper when he lived there, for a room to be prepared for you. J.J. mentioned that you’d probably be working here for a number of months and he and I agreed that in view of Elsinore’s distance from the nearest town, and the fact that he has warned me that you like to keep a very keen eye on the budgets, it makes sense for you to stay at the Rectory rather than waste time and money hunting around for alternative accommodation.” “Wow! Did you now? Still deciding on my behalf…” she whispered this last part more for herself than him. “Yes. Especially since it seems that there could be occasions when you might have to travel abroad to check on work you’ve set in progress at other Trust properties.” Well, what he said made sense
MY FAVORITE SCAR CHAPTER 7
They had covered the ground floor of the house, walked the length of the elegant gallery, with its windows overlooking the parkland and the distant vista of the Derbyshire hills, and were just inspecting the enormous ballroom which opened off it, when Veronica acknowledged inwardly that Sasha might have been right to advise her to wait until after she had rested to inspect the house. Elsinore Hall’s rooms might not possess quite the vastness of the palazzo’s marble-floored rooms, nor the fading grandeur of the Prague palace, but Veronica had already lost count of the number of salons and ante-chambers they had walked through on the lower floor. The gallery felt as though it stretched for miles, and as she studied the dusty wooden floor of the ballroom her heart sank at the thought of inspecting
MY FAVORITE SCAR CHAPTER 8
Veronica was sitting upright now, ignoring the pounding pain in her head as she glared belligerently at Sasha.“You don’t know what you’re talking about! J.J. doesn’t... he isn’t...” She stopped, shaking her head. How could she explain to Sasha of all people, about the thing that drove her, the memories and the fears? As a teenager, she had done so many foolish things and even let down the people who had loved and supported her. Her involvement with Wayne was something she knew she would always regret. She hadn’t known at the time, of course, just what he was. In her innocent naiveté, Veronica had never guessed that he was anything other than someone who had bought a handful of recreational drugs to pass on to people at rave parties.
MY FAVORITE SCAR CHAPTER 9
Hard on the heels of the acute envy, Veronica had felt when she had first seen the exterior of the house came to a pang of sadness for its inner neglect. Oh, it was clean enough, if you discounted the air possessing a sharp, almost chemical smell that made Veronica wrinkle her nose a little, but it was a long, long way from the home she had so lovingly mentally created. She heard Sasha moving around in the hall behind her.“Let’s go… I’ll take you up to your room,” he told her. “Have you got something for your headache?”“Yes, I have, but they’re in my luggage… which is in my hire car… That you left behind…” Veronica told him grimly. In the excitement of seeing the house, her headache had abated slightly, but now the strong smell in the hallway had made it return and… with interest. She
MY FAVORITE SCAR CHAPTER 10
Sasha grimaced as he studied the very obviously cut-through pieces of fencing wire. This was no accident… Someone had quite definitely used wire cutters on them, which meant... The lambs which had been born early in the spring had all gone now, his breeding stock the only flock that remained. And the deer roaming the home park was a tempting target for poachers. The last time he had seen Henry, the two of them had discussed the pros and cons of tagging their deer. Like him, Henry had a small herd on his estate, but since their marriage, Mollie, his wife, had added a new strain to them in the shape of the same miniature deer that she had bred so successfully. As Sasha glanced towards the line of bushes that separated the parkland from the main gardens to the H
MY FAVORITE SCAR CHAPTER 11
Instinctively her free hand went to her body to check just how far up her T-shirt had ridden.“What is it?” Sasha asked her, his attention caught by the movement of her hand.“Uh… You’re heavy, Sasha. You’re still on top of me and you’re hurting me,” Veronica told him, not entirely truthfully. She tried to bury herself in the night’s cloaking shadows, but it was too late and she could see from the sudden narrowing of his gaze as it followed the action of her hand that he realized, as she had just done herself, that her wretched T-shirt had ridden up far enough to expose the lower curve of her breasts. The last thing, the very last thing Veronica wanted was for Sasha to study her body in any way at all. So why, in God’s name?... Why,
MY FAVORITE SCAR CHAPTER 12
Veronica frowned as she started to double-check what she had just been reading. In a detailed account for the work involved in treating both the wet and dry rot to Elsinore Hall, she had only just noticed something strange. Just slipped in at the back of the file, was an additional sheet reporting on some dry rot infestation in the Rectory, Sasha’s private property, and with it was a brief note confirming that the work on the Rectory would be put in hand before the contractors started working on Elsinore Hall itself. She could feel her heart starting to thump heavily with a mixture of anger and pain as she read the sheet again. It wasn’t unknown for the owners of the properties the Trust took over to try to drive as hard a bargain as they possibly could.&nbs
MY FAVORITE SCAR CHAPTER 13
“What? What the hell are you talking about?” Sasha demanded ominously quietly, his expression as well as his voice betraying his outrage. “Listen, Veronica, I don’t like what you’re trying to suggest,” he told her sharply. She shook her head and replied thinly.“Neither do I, Sasha. But the facts speak for themselves.”“Do they?” His mouth twisted bitterly.“I rather think it’s your overheated imagination that’s doing the ‘speaking’ through your totally mistaken interpretation of them,” Sasha added through gritted teeth.“You can say what you want at this point… But you can’t deny the evidence of this report,” Veronica reminded him sternly.“What evidence?” Sasha demanded. “This is
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