Liz Fielding - His Personal Agenda

With a soft moan he reached out and slid his fingers through her hair. Matt knew he should back off and resist her. This was breaking all the rules. But it was too late. He’d been drawn by something almost desperate in Nyssa’s eyes, a vulnerability, a hunger that spoke directly to him.

Besides, the rules no longer mattered. Tomorrow Matt would return the developer’s money, and tell him to find someone else to do his dirty work.

Then he put thinking on hold and started acting. He pulled her close and teased her lips, swallowing her scent so that it became part of him forever.

She shivered with pleasure. “This is crazy!”

“Madness…” he whispered.

Born and raised in Berkshire, LIZ FIELDING started writing at the age of twelve when she won a hymn-writing competition at her convent school. After a gap of more years than she is prepared to admit to, during which she worked as a secretary in Africa and the Middle East, got married and had two children, she was finally able to realize her ambition and turn to full-time writing in 1992.

She now lives with her husband, John, in west Wales, surrounded by mystical countryside and romantic, crumbling castles, content to leave the traveling to her grown-up children and keeping in touch with the rest of the world via the Internet. Readers can visit Liz Fielding’s Web site at www.lizfielding.com.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

MATT CROSBY considered the man sitting behind the vast mahogany desk with a certain detachment. Charles Parker was not an easy man to warm to, but he would pay well and Matt had a lot of expenses.

‘I don’t have to explain the problem to you, Crosby,’ he said, sliding a file across the polished acres of mahogany. ‘This woman is a troublemaker. She’s holding up an important development, something badly needed, and she’s got to be stopped.’

Matt wasn’t taken in by protestations of concern for the public interest. Charles Parker’s only concern was for profit. But he picked up the file and contemplated the photograph of a young woman clipped to the inside cover.

Nyssa Blake. The face that launched a thousand town planning appeals.

She headed the wish list of every property developer in Britain. And they all wished the same thing. That she would go away.

According to the brief biography attached she was a few months shy of her twenty-third birthday, but she was already capable of making Charles Parker reach for the panic button. With good reason. Her track record for forcing developers to ‘think again’ was impressive.

‘She can’t be allowed to get away with it,’ Parker insisted impatiently.

‘No, I suppose not.’ After all, if she wasn’t stopped soon she might get the crazy idea that she could do anything. Matt had been twenty-two himself once, and just about remembered having ideals and a burning desire to put the world to rights, remembered that youthful sense of invincibility that didn’t know when it was beaten. He’d learned the hard way.

Parker glanced at him sharply. ‘There’s no suppose about it.’ Then, ‘That file contains just about everything that anyone has ever written about her, and my secretary will give you video tapes…news coverage of her last campaign—’

‘An out-of-town shopping park, wasn’t it?’

Parker shuddered. ‘She brought in a botanist who was supposed to have found some rare species no one had ever heard of and cared even less about.’

‘Out-of-town shopping has become very un-PC. The local authority was probably glad of any excuse to stop it.’ Parker glared at him and Matt shrugged. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Don’t tempt me.’ Parker laughed shortly. He was seriously rattled, seriously worried, Matt decided. Well, he’d heard rumours that Parker was having cash-flow problems. Any delay would hurt him badly. ‘What I’d really like is for someone to shut her up in some deep, dark dungeon and throw away the key.’ When Matt was unresponsive to this suggestion Parker shrugged. ‘No, well, maybe not.’ And he added a little laugh, just to show that he hadn’t really meant it.

Matt was not entirely convinced. ‘I won’t be involved in anything like that,’ he said.

‘Who would? As well as being the darling the of media, a myth in her own lifetime, she also has some powerful family connections.’ He nodded towards the file. ‘It’s all there. See what you can do with it.’

The file was certainly a hefty one, but Matt Crosby put it back on the desk. ‘I’m sure she’s a serious pain in the backside but I just don’t see what you expect me to do about it. I know some of her hangers-on can get a bit out of hand, but she’s a perfect Miss Goody Two-Shoes from all accounts. Never puts a foot wrong.’

‘Well, if she’s looking for evidence that the Gaumont Cinema at Delvering is worth saving she’ll have to break in to find it.’

‘Maybe you should just give her a guided tour, show her that she’s wasting her time? Maybe you should just bulldoze the place down?’ Parker didn’t respond to any of those suggestions. Matt shrugged. ‘Well, I suppose a court appearance would tarnish the halo…’

‘If you think I’m paying your kind of fees just to see her get a fifty-pound fine and a ticking off at the local magistrates’ court, you can think again.’

‘Faced with a brick wall,’ Matt pointed out, ‘you have two choices—bang your head against it, or take it down brick by brick.’

Parker snorted. ‘I haven’t got time for games. This is urgent.’ He leaned forward. ‘You come highly recommended as a troubleshooter, Crosby. This girl is trouble and I want her…’ He hesitated.

‘Shot?’ Matt offered helpfully.

Parker glared at him. ‘Out of my hair. You’re supposed to be some kind of genius at digging up those nasty little secrets people would rather keep buried—’

‘You make a lot of enemies that way.’ Matt looked at the solemn-faced young woman in the photograph. He’d rather make a friend…

The man behind the desk wasn’t interested in his problems. ‘If you dig deep enough there’s got to be something, and once the fawning masses discover that their heroine has feet of clay she’ll find the world is a very lonely place.’

Matt did not find the prospect of digging around in Nyssa Blake’s life looking for dirt in the least bit appealing. ‘This girl is twenty-two years old, Parker, and ever since she dropped out of university she’s spent her time stopping people like you riding roughshod over planning regulations. What the devil do you think I’m going to find?’

‘What about drugs? All those hippie types smoke pot, don’t they?’

‘Do they?’ He shrugged. ‘She’s no hippie, Parker. Besides, I doubt that she smokes anything.’ He regarded Parker steadily, keeping his features expressionless. ‘I’m sure she’d tell you that smoke is bad for the ozone layer.’

The man scowled back at him. ‘Sex, then.’

‘Sex?’ Matt unclipped Nyssa Blake’s photograph from the file and stared at it for a moment. She gazed back at him with frank speedwell-blue eyes that looked out from a small oval face framed by a tiny pageboy bob of bright red hair. Her skin was clear and fresh, her mouth full but without a hint of a smile. She had the earnest look of a crusader about her.

There was nothing conventionally beautiful about Miss Nyssa Blake, but he didn’t doubt that when she entered a room every eye in the place would swivel in her direction.

‘I wouldn’t rely on sex to put people off,’ he said. On the contrary, he was sure that any suggestion that the lady was free with her favours would have every red-blooded male in the country clamouring to join her action group. ‘I should think money is your best bet. Who’s putting up the money for her campaigns? Quality PR doesn’t come cheap. And the kind of coverage she attracts suggests there’s someone behind it who knows what they’re doing.’

‘Donations from well-wishers, according to the lady.’

‘That’s a lot of good wishes.’

‘We seem to be working on the same wavelength at last, Crosby.’ Parker sat back, a small, satisfied smile momentarily straightening his thin lips. ‘And if you draw a blank on the money side of things maybe you should take a look at her family. Her father was a soldier, killed in the Gulf War and posthumously decorated for bravery. I’m sure his daughter would do anything to protect his good name. And the dead can’t sue for libel.’

‘You can make up your own lies, Parker, you don’t need me for that.’

‘Lies won’t do. Even rumours need a little fuel to feed on if they’re going to do any damage; I need something with at least a grain of truth to glue it together. If you come across any suggestion of other women or money problems in her father’s life, I want to know. Do you understand?’ Parker didn’t wait for a reply, taking his understanding for granted. And Matt Crosby understood. He didn’t much like it, but he understood. ‘Her mother remarried three or four years ago,’ Parker continued, then paused. ‘Her new husband is James Lambert. He’s a property developer, too,’ he added, thoughtfully tapping the file. ‘Nyssa Blake dropped out of university at about the same time. That might be an angle worth pursuing. You’ve got plenty of material to work with—’

‘It’s quality that counts, not quantity.’

‘Everyone has something to hide, Crosby. Something that wouldn’t look too good on the front page of the tabloids. If you can’t find anything on the girl, maybe you can dig up some dirt on her family. There are a couple of stepsisters; one is an actress… I just need a lever. I can apply the pressure myself.’

‘If she doesn’t like the man her mother married she’s hardly likely to back off to protect him or his daughters. Why don’t you just ask her what she wants from you, Parker? It would save time and money in the long term.’

‘Wants?’

‘Well, she knows that she’s not going to win in the end. You’re going to tear down a past-its-sell-by-date cinema and replace it with a supermarket. Maybe a few locals have gone all dewy-eyed with nostalgia, remembering their lost youth spent in the back seats of the stalls, but most of the town would probably rather have the supermarket. All she can do is delay you.’

‘All? Every day that passes is costing me—’ He stopped abruptly but Matt didn’t need to be drawn a picture. The rumours were true; if Parker didn’t get the redevelopment of the site through the local planning committee quickly, he was going to be in serious trouble.

‘So why not ask her what she wants? You never know, keeping the original façade might do it. Try reason, be accommodating. And if you can smile while you’re doing it you might discover that you’ve become the hero and Miss Nyssa Blake will be the one who has to convince her supporters that she hasn’t sold out.’

‘That’s an excellent idea, Crosby. Unfortunately the supermarket has a corporate image; art deco Gaumont style doesn’t even come close. Besides, Nyssa Blake wants the whole thing restored to its former glory. She believes the town needs an entertainment centre more than it needs a new supermarket.’

‘Is it? Needed?’ Parker gave him a sharp look, but since Matt hadn’t expected a straight answer he carried on. ‘Look, this isn’t a six-lane highway being bulldozed through a site of scientific interest. It’s just a local battle with the planners. Small stuff. The media will soon lose interest.’