Beyond Compare by Penny Jordan

Author:Penny Jordan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-03-22T20:59:41+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

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'I've brought your car back, miss. Everything's fine now…'

'Oh, thank you. I'm sorry you had to send for the spare. I suppose really I should have asked Drew to take it to a local dealer, but I just never gave it a thought.'

'Send for a spare? But…'

'Thanks, Jack. I take it everything's in order?'

Holly hadn't heard Drew arrive in the yard, and whatever the garage mechanic had been about to say was lost as he chatted to Drew and handed her car keys over to Holly.

After he had gone, Holly remarked, 'That's odd. He doesn't seem to have left me a bill. Perhaps he'll send it in the post.'

'It's all been taken care of,' Drew told her briefly, and it took Holly several seconds to realise what he meant.

'Drew, you haven't paid it!' she exclaimed in distress. 'Oh, you mustn't do that. Please give me the bill.'

'If you insist,' he said quietly, obviously a little taken aback by her insistence.

Holly followed him into his office, where he handed the bill over to her.

'What's the panic, Holly?' he asked her, 'Does it offend you that I paid it?'

'No. No… nothing like that,' Holly assured him. If she was honest with herself, she had rather liked the sensation of being cosseted and taken care of; indeed, she could very easily get all too used to it. Drew's manners were of the old-fashioned variety, but he was no domineering chauvinist, and Holly could quite see that he would think it no more than his duty to pay for the repairs, simply because he had been responsible for taking the car to the garage.

'You've already done so much for me, Drew. Carry on like this and you'll be turning me into a helpless female parasite.'

'Not you,' he assured her, and his words warmed her heart.

She had half hoped he would insist on her waiting until Thursday to visit Knutsford so that he could go with her, but he had done no such thing, and so as soon as Drew had assured herself that her car had been properly repaired she set out for the pretty market town.

Parts of Knutsford owed a great deal to the Italian influence of a certain architect, and when Holly had parked her car and was wandering around the small town, familiarising herself with its layout, she smiled a little to see the Italianate buildings in their late autumnal Cheshire setting.

Of course, the town also had its traditional half-timbered coaching house, and the narrow thoroughfare that was the town's main shopping street was lined with a jumble of Tudor and Georgian buildings, interspersed here and there with something more modern.

The estate agent she visited first was pleasant but dismissive: a man in his late fifties, who plainly was not prepared to take her seriously, and Holly longed to have Drew at her side. Drew was the kind of man who would instantly command respect and attention from other members of his sex, she recognised, and yet he

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