‘And these days everyone calls me Xandra.’
‘Xandra,’ he repeated without comment. She’d been named, without reference to him, after her maternal grandmother, a woman who’d wanted him put up against a wall and shot for despoiling her little princess. It was probably just as well that at the time he’d been too numb with shock to laugh.
Indicating his approval, however, would almost certainly cause her to change back. Nothing he did was ever right. He’d tried so hard, loved her so much, but it had always been a battle between them. And, much as he’d have liked to blame her mother for that, he knew it wasn’t her fault. He simply had no idea how to be a dad. The kind that a little girl would smile at, run to.
‘I have no interest in your mother’s whereabouts,’ he said. ‘I want to know why you’re here instead of at school?’
She lifted her shoulders in an insolent shrug. ‘I’ve been suspended.’
‘Suspended?’
‘Indefinitely.’ Then with a second, epic, I-really-couldn’t-care-less shrug, ‘Until after Christmas, anyway. Not that it matters. I wouldn’t go back if they paid me.’
‘Unlikely, I’d have said.’
‘If you offered to build them a new science lab I bet they’d be keen enough.’
‘In that case I’d be the one paying them to take you back,’ he pointed out. ‘What has your mother done about it?’
‘Nothing. I told you. She’s lying on a beach somewhere. With her phone switched off.’
‘You could have called me.’
‘And what? You’d have dropped everything and rushed across the Atlantic to play daddy? Who knew you cared?’
He clenched his teeth. He was his father all over again. Incapable of forming a bond, making contact with this child who’d nearly destroyed his life. Who, from the moment she’d been grudgingly placed in his arms, had claimed his heart.
He would have done anything for her, died for her if need be. Anything but give up the dream he’d fought tooth and nail to achieve.
All the money in the world, the house his ex-wife had chosen, the expensive education-nothing he’d done had countered that perceived desertion.
‘Let’s pretend for a moment that I do,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’ She coloured slightly. ‘Nothing much.’ He waited. ‘I hot-wired the head’s car and took it for a spin, that’s all.’
Hot-wired…
Apparently taking his shocked silence as encouragement to continue, she said, ‘Honestly. Who’d have thought the Warthog would have made such a fuss?’
‘You’re not old enough to drive!’ Then, because she’d grown so fast, was almost a woman, ‘Are you?’
She just raised her eyebrows, leaving him to work it out for himself. He was right. He’d been nineteen when she was born, which meant that his daughter wouldn’t be seventeen until next May. It would be six months before she could even apply for a licence.
‘You stole a car, drove it without a licence, without insurance?’ He somehow managed to keep his voice neutral. ‘That’s your idea of “nothing much”?’
He didn’t bother asking who’d taught her to drive. That would be the same person who’d given him an old banger and let him loose in the field out back as soon as his feet touched the pedals. Driving was in the Saxon blood, according to his father, and engine oil ran through their veins.
But, since she’d hot-wired Mrs Warburton’s car, clearly driving wasn’t all her grandfather had taught her.
‘What were you doing under the Bentley?’ he demanded as a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature ran through him.
‘Just checking it out. It needs new brake linings…’ The phone began to ring. With the slightest of shrugs, she leaned around him, unhooked it from the wall and said, ‘George Saxon and Granddaughter…’
What?
‘Where are you?’ she asked, reaching for a pen. ‘Are you on your own…? Okay, stay with the car-’
George Saxon and Granddaughter…
Shock slowed him down and as he moved to wrest the phone from her she leaned back out of his reach.
‘-we’ll be with you in ten minutes.’ She replaced the receiver. ‘A lone woman broken down on the Longbourne Road,’ she said. ‘I told her we’ll pick her up.’
‘I heard what you said. Just how do you propose to do that?’ he demanded furiously.
‘Get in the tow-truck,’ she suggested, ‘drive down the road…’
‘There’s no one here to deal with a breakdown.’
‘You’re here. I’m here. Granddad says I’m as good as you were with an engine.’
If she thought that would make him feel better, she would have to think again.
‘Call her back,’ he said, pulling down the local directory. ‘Tell her we’ll find someone else to help her.’
‘I didn’t take her number.’
‘It doesn’t matter. She won’t care who turns up so long as someone does,’ he said, punching in the number of another garage. It had rung just twice when he heard the clunk as a truck door was slammed shut. On the third ring he heard it start.
He turned around as a voice in his ear said, ‘Longbourne Motors. How can I…’
The personnel door was wide open and, as he watched, the headlights of the pick-up truck pierced the dark.
‘Sorry,’ he said, dropping the phone and racing after his daughter, wrenching open the cab door as it began to move. ‘Turn it off!’
She began to move as he reached for the keys.
‘Alexandra! Don’t you dare!’ He hung onto the door, walking quickly alongside the truck as she moved across the forecourt.
‘It’s Granddad’s business,’ she said, speeding up a little, forcing him to run or let go. He ran. ‘I’m not going to let you shut it down.’ Then, having made her point, she eased off the accelerator until the truck rolled to a halt before turning to challenge him. ‘I love cars, engines. I’m going to run this place, be a rally driver-’
‘What?’
‘Granddad’s going to sponsor me.’
‘You’re sixteen,’ he said, not sure whether he was more horrified that she wanted to race cars or fix them. ‘You don’t know what you want.’
Even as he said the words, he heard his father’s voice. ‘You’re thirteen, boy. Your head is full of nonsense. You don’t know what you want…’
He’d gone on saying it to him even when he was filling in forms, applying for university places, knowing that he’d get no financial backing, that he’d have to support himself every step of the way.
Even when his ‘nonsense’ was being installed in every new engine manufactured throughout the world, his father had still been telling him he was wrong…
‘Move over,’ he said.
Xandra clung stubbornly to the steering wheel. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Since you’ve already kept a lone woman waiting in a dark country lane for five minutes longer than necessary, I haven’t got much choice. I’m going to let you pick her up.’
‘Me?’
‘You. But you’ve already committed enough motoring offences for one week, so I’ll drive the truck.’
CHAPTER TWO
ANNIE saw the tow-truck, yellow light flashing on the roof of the cab, looming out of the dark, and sighed with relief as it pulled up just ahead of her broken-down car.
After a lorry, driving much too fast along the narrow country lane, had missed the front of the car by inches, she’d scrambled out and was standing with her back pressed against the gate, shivering with the cold.
The driver jumped down and swung a powerful torch over and around the car, and she threw up an arm to shield her eyes from the light as he found her.