There was so much about Wendy Bennington’s house that made her feel unutterably sad. It was as though the elderly woman did no more than camp here. She’d certainly made no effort to make the place feel comfortable…or even like a home.

The freezer was in desperate need of being defrosted and Lydia struggled to lift the lid. She chipped off huge chunks of ice and lifted out the top basket.

Inside there were countless boxes of pre-prepared meals for one, half-opened packets of stir-fry and frozen vegetables. Surely more than enough to feed a single person for several months? Lydia lifted out a small packet of peas and headed back upstairs.

Nick turned as soon as she got there. ‘Have you found something? Her ankle seems to be bothering her now.’

‘You’ll need to wrap this in a towel. It’s very cold.’

But even as she spoke he’d pulled out a pillow from its pillowcase and tucked the frozen packet inside. She watched as he carefully held it up against the swelling and heard Wendy’s small moan of pain.

‘Is there anything else I can do? I’d like to help.’

Nick glanced up. ‘If you want to be useful you could take your car down to the village and point the ambulance in the right direction.’

‘I’m sure there’s no need for that. I found my way here without a problem.’

‘But it’s a single track road and if they miss the junction there’s nowhere to turn for a couple of miles.’

Lydia frowned, uncertain what to do. What he was saying about the junction was true—but it was more than that. He so clearly wanted her to leave.

She heard the elderly woman mumble incomprehensibly and wondered whether he wished her to go because he knew how much Wendy would hate being seen this way. If the situation was reversed, if she were the woman lying on the floor, she would prefer there were no strangers to see it.

And there was no doubt that Wendy trusted Nick implicitly, not once had she glanced across in Lydia’s direction. Her eyes searched out his as though they would be her salvation.

It felt intensely private. His strong hand calmly held Wendy’s frail agitated one in his. Lydia didn’t think she’d ever seen a man so gentle or so eminently capable of managing a situation alone.

‘I’ll wait in the village.’

Nick scarcely noticed she’d spoken; his mind and energy were focused entirely on Wendy Bennington.

As it should be, she reminded herself. Of course, he should be totally concerned about the sick woman.

Lydia reached inside an inner pocket of her handbag and pulled out a business card. ‘Would you call me? I’d like to know how Ms Bennington is doing.’

He turned, his expression unreadable. If he wasn’t a poker player, he ought to be. She couldn’t tell whether he thought it reasonable that she wanted to know what happened to Wendy or whether he thought it an intrusion.

‘Please?’

His face didn’t change, but after a short pause he reached out and took her card. ‘Make sure you leave the front door open,’ he said, tucking it in the back pocket of his jeans.

Lydia supposed she had to take that as an agreement that he would call her. Whether he would remember to actually do it or not was a different matter.

Quietly she walked down the stairs and into the oppressively gloomy kitchen. Her briefcase was still by the rusting boiler where she’d left it. Lydia bent and picked it up, before taking a last opportunity to glance about her.

Sad. It was a truly sad place.

Slowly she walked along the hall and carefully put the front door on the latch. It was strange that Nick Regan let Wendy Bennington live in such a way. He so obviously loved her. It was in the way he’d brushed her hair off her forehead and held her hand.

So who was he? Why was he so concerned about Wendy Bennington? It surely went beyond being a mere friend, but his name hadn’t appeared in her research. As far as she’d been able to ascertain, Wendy had no family at all. Not even a nephew. An only child of only children.

She walked down the narrow front path, mulling over the possibilities. At the gate she stopped, mouth open in disbelief. His car was parked immediately in front of her own—and her mother’s wealth barometer had been spot on. Nick Regan drove a top of the range sports car. So who the heck was he?

Lydia opened her car door, feeling vaguely ashamed. There was something in her which made it impossible to switch off ‘the journalist’. Why couldn’t she merely be pleased that Wendy had someone who loved her? Wendy had lived her life entirely for other people; it was right that when she needed help herself there should be someone to give it. Someone who cared because they chose to, rather than doing so out of a sense of duty.

She tipped the front seat of her more modest car forward and slid in her briefcase. Perhaps she hadn’t been so far adrift in thinking he was behaving like a son? It had to be a possibility because what else was there?

The engine purred into life and Lydia took a last glance back at the cottage through her rear-view mirror. He was the right kind of age. Thirty-four, maybe as much as thirty-eight. Certainly no more.

Perhaps he was the result of a passionate affair? She let her imagination soar. An affair with a married man? Or the husband of a friend? Or was he a sperm donor baby? Or…

She was getting ridiculous. If Wendy Bennington had ever been pregnant someone somewhere would have written about it. She glanced up again at her driver’s mirror and groaned at the image she presented. Her hair was still bunched up in a childish topknot. Hardly the look of an award-winning journalist.

Damn.

She ripped out the scrunchie and let her hair fall softly around her shoulders. Nick bloody Regan probably thought she was some kind of tea girl rather than the woman his…friend…had chosen as her biographer.

It shouldn’t matter. Lydia crunched her car into first gear. It didn’t matter—at all. But…but this was not turning out to be a good day.

Nick heard her leave. First her footsteps on the stairs and then the sound of her car pulling away. He let out his breath in a steady stream and tried to settle himself into a more comfortable position on the floor.

He hadn’t expected Lydia Stanford would give up so easily. Her kind always stayed to the last. They circled overhead, waiting for the kill, like the scavengers they were. The wonder was that she hadn’t whipped out her camera and taken some photographs as ‘background colour’—or whatever she called it to salve her conscience.

Nick rested his head against the wall. There were other journalists, with far better credentials than Ms Stanford, who would have been more than anxious to write an authorised biography. Some he would have trusted to do a fair and balanced job of it.

But Lydia Stanford…

No. He wouldn’t trust her as far as he could spit. What Wendy had been thinking of to insist on a woman capable of building her career by using her own sister’s tragedy he couldn’t imagine. You had to be an automaton to do what Lydia had done.

Any normal person would have been overcome by grief at her sister’s attempted suicide. They’d have hung by her bedside, too traumatised to do anything else.

But not Lydia Stanford. Ms Stanford had launched an exhaustive vendetta against the man at the centre of the scandal. She’d meticulously collected information on his fraudulent business dealings, making sure she had enough to ruin him.

And in the process she’d made her own fortune. Not bad going. But what about the sister? How did she feel about being a stepping stone in her sister’s career?

Even his ex-wife, Ana, wouldn’t have been so coldly calculating. He rubbed a hand across the spike of pain in his forehead. Or just not as overt? But that made precious little difference to the people around them. They still got hurt. Collateral damage in a game they didn’t know they were playing.