Someone to Love Read online

  With that he stood up and walked out to the sidewalk. Nigh hastily finished her drink and ran after him.

  “Pick a store,” he said. “Go in, buy yourself a wardrobe, and I’ll meet you there in one hour and we’ll leave.”

  “That one,” Nigh said, pointing to a high-end boutique that had Prada in the window. “But it looks expensive.”

  “You snooped into my background, so you know I can afford it.”

  “And I’m paying you back later, right?”

  “Yes,” he said, then turned and walked away.

  She didn’t know what she’d done to anger him, but she had. She couldn’t worry about it now. She had a lot to do and little time to do it. She went to the store and told the clerk that she had one hour to put together a wardrobe, then her boyfriend would pay for it.

  An hour and a half later, they were back in Jace’s Rover and heading toward Tolben Hall. They were dressed in upscale English country, Jace in a jacket and tie with lightweight wool trousers, while Nigh was wearing a dress that looked rather plain but had actually cost a couple of thousand pounds. She couldn’t help running her hands down her sleeves.

  “It will take me a while to pay you back,” she said, glancing at the two suitcases that Jace had brought with him when he’d picked her up. Empty when he’d arrived, they were now filled with new clothes, plus all the toiletries they’d purchased at Boots pharmacy.

  “All right,” Jace said, “I want the truth. What is it you do for a living?”

  “Journalist,” she said.

  He glanced at her with a grimace on his face.

  “No, what I wrote about you is not an example of my work. That was…”

  “What was it?”

  “Jet lag, maybe. And…horror. I’ve had a lot happen in my life in the last couple years and sometimes I have no perspective.”

  “Tell me about it,” Jace said and there was such empathy in his voice that she wanted to tell him.

  She told him her parents had died within a year of each other—first her father, then her mother—and it was as though Nigh had had the anchor in her life removed. She suddenly hated everything about her life, and she just wanted to leave Margate and all the memories. She wanted to get away.

  “So you went to London,” Jace said.

  She laughed. “Exactly. Where all Englishmen and -women go when they want to find themselves—or lose themselves. I got a job in a newsroom, mostly getting coffee for the bosses. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and they didn’t know what to do with me. But one night the news presenter didn’t show up. Later we found out she’d fallen down a flight of stairs in her house and knocked herself out. She lived alone, so there was no one to call in sick for her.”

  Nigh told Jace how they’d looked around at the people who were in the studio and Nigh had been the only person there who, as they said, wouldn’t “frighten the viewers,” so they sent her to hair and makeup and put her on the air. The only instruction she was given was to read what she saw on the teleprompter.

  No one knew it at the time, but it had been an audition. Nigh had done an excellent job in the reading and she photographed well. The next day she was given a real job.

  It was a month later that she heard that a news team was being sent to Egypt to report on a tourist bus that had been shot at, and Nigh asked to be allowed to go.

  “Foreign correspondent,” Jace said.

  “Yes. For the last eight years I’ve never been in any one place for more than four days at a time. I live on airplanes and in hotels.” She looked out the window and said no more.

  “But now you’ve come home. Is it for good?”

  “I don’t know. I know that I’m tired. I know that I’ve seen too much bloodshed and too much horror in the world.” She took a deep breath. “Eleven months ago I was in Iraq and my cameraman, Steve, was blown up. He was standing three feet away, filming me talking to some women and children. I had a translator with me and I was asking them about the horror in their lives. I was near to tears as I heard what they had to say. In the next second, I heard a sound and suddenly there was blood and metal fragments everywhere. A mortar or a missile, something, I don’t know what, had directly hit my cameraman, a man I really liked, a man with a wife and three kids. His body exploded over us and the camera equipment blew into tiny pieces. Many of the children I was talking with were seriously injured. I was wounded too, but mostly I was in shock.”

  Jace reached over, took her hand in his, and held it.

  “I don’t remember too much after that. Medics came and the kids were treated.”

  “And you?”

  “Airlifted out, stitched up, given some pills, and told that if I wanted to talk to someone, they’d listen.”

  “Did you?”

  “No,” Nigh said softly. “I couldn’t talk because I didn’t know what I would say. I wanted to help the world, but I don’t think I’m cut out for death and destruction. I can’t seem to disconnect myself from what I see.”

  Turning, she looked at him and smiled. “I thought I was someone who could fight, but I seem to be a coward.”

  “You don’t sound like a coward to me,” Jace said. “What happened to you would traumatize anyone.”

  “You don’t know the news world. The real news people have something like that happen to them, they have a couple of Scotches, then they go right back to it.”

  “But you couldn’t,” Jace said.

  “No. I’ve done some reporting since then, but not much, and I taper off more and more. I thought I might…”

  “Might what?”

  “Write about what I’ve seen. I thought I might write about the people I met, what I heard and what I saw. I came back home to be still and to listen to my own thoughts, and think about what I want to do with the rest of my life.”

  “And you thought your little village was being invaded by a big, bad American.”

  Nigh smiled. “’Fraid so. Sorry. I’m used to hearing two sentences of information and within six minutes changing it into a headline-grabbing story. I can’t tell you how many news reports I’ve written in helicopters.”

  “So have you made any decisions?” Jace asked.

  “Turn here,” she said. “So far, not a one. My idea of spending my days alone and taking long, thoughtful walks has been superseded by ghost hunting with an American who keeps more secrets than all the Middle East.”

  “Small secrets. Personal ones. Not important except to me. Not earth-moving like your secrets, or your life.”

  “There it is,” Nigh said, pointing to a sign that said Tolben Hall.

  Jace pulled into the long driveway and the house came into view through the trees. It was lovely, a huge Victorian house with a turret on one end, and a pointed roof. There was a deep porch with a swing and several round windows.

  “I can see why Longstreet bought this instead of Priory House.”

  “There it is again,” Nigh said. “You hate your house. You think it’s dreadful, but you paid an enormous amount for it. Why?”

  “Didn’t I tell you that I’m a masochist?”

  “Great! I brought my dominatrix gear. We’ll tie you up later.”

  Jace was laughing as he got out of the car and opened the trunk to get the suitcases.

  “I’ll check in,” she said, then ran up the steps to the front door.

  A few minutes later, Jace entered carrying the two suitcases. Nigh was talking to a short, thin, gray-haired woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Fenney. “I was just telling Miss Smythe,” she said, “that you’ll have the whole house to yourselves. We’re usually full on the weekends but not so busy during the week. And you’ll be staying how long?” She looked at Jace.

  “Three days,” he said quickly.

  “Oh, that’s fine then. Let me show you your rooms.”

  They followed her up the stairs to a long corridor with several doors along it. She opened one to reveal a large, pretty room done in pink and green chintz. There was a r