Bad Boys and Billionaires (The Naughty List Bundles)

by Synthia St. Claire

  She dragged her attention away from imaginary murder, and pressed on. “That’s not too far away, is it? Jesthorpe, I mean?”

  Bet pursed her lips, and inflated with regional pride. “Jesthorpe is the main town in this area. We’ve got a cinema. Ingholme is a bit… well, you’ll see. Backward. The only reason there’s branch of Gussy’s there is because all the local farmers are usually too blind drunk on moonshine to build a proper barn and so they keep falling down. So they need to buy a lot of wood. And stuff.” Bet grinned and awaited admiration for her succinct and pithy wit.

  Helena smiled politely. “Quite. I see.”

  Bet’s sausage fingers played with her earrings. They were multi-coloured costume jewellery but Helena thought they still looked quite fantastic. She considered complimenting Bet on them, but she wasn’t sure how to make it sound genuine and not sarcastic, so she didn’t mention it. Bet twirled the peacock feathers and glittery stones as she said, “Anyway, dear, I was told you’re not living in either Jesthorpe or Ingholme.”

  She sounded shocked, and shook her head in despair, as if Helena had been offered the heady heights of those two towns, and had instead chosen to squat in an abandoned nuclear bunker.

  A thickset man called Clive lumbered back in from outside, cigarette smoke clinging to his wispy grey hair, and sat down heavily next to Bet. “Aye,” he remarked, mirroring Bet’s tone of disapproval. “You’ve taken some cottage out in the arse-end of bumfuck-nowhere!”

  Helena’s eyebrows shot up at his jovial, and very loud, language. Terry tutted but remained the other side of the table, fiddling with the digital projector. Helena had already assumed he lacked the backbone to really reprimand any of his staff.

  “It’s not bumf- it’s not the middle of nowhere. It seems a very pretty little village.” Or it will be, when it stops raining.

  Clive roared with laughter. “It makes the town of Ingholme look like bleeding Las Vegas. Seriously, girl, you’ll not last out there. You’ll not. You’ll be begging to move into Ingholme within weeks.”

  “Or Jesthorpe.”

  “Aye, or there. Or anywhere where people don’t marry their sisters, have affairs with their sisters’ goats, and burn incomers like you.”

  “I’m not an incomer.” Helena folded her arms, infuriated. She’d fallen in love with the grey-stone village nestled on the edge of the East Lancashire moors, and she already felt defensive about it, and her choice to live there. “I’m a northerner. I’m a local.”

  “You’re not local,” Clive argued.

  “I grew up thirty miles away!”

  “Exactly.”

  She fought the urge to roll her eyes. “What is this, pick on the new girl day?” she shot at him, and he laughed even harder.

  “I like your balls,” he told her, “you’ll do all right, girl.”

  “I am not a girl. Nor do I have balls.”

  Clive was unrepentant. “Aye.”

  That wasn’t a reply, or an argument, or an apology, but she saw that it was the best she was going to get from him. She briefly considered launching into a tirade about appropriate language and forms of address for women, but it was early in the day, early in her new job, and worst of all, he was the overall branch manager of the place she’d be office manager so he was technically going to be her boss.

  Goddamn it.

  Yet he was grinning like a man who was at peace with all the world, and she saw there was no malice at all in him. He was the sort of man who had no notion that he could ever cause offence, and would probably be offended if she objected to his words. “Girl” was no doubt intended as a huge compliment.

  So she smiled back politely, but made a mental note to start leaving stridently feminist magazines lying around the office. A couple of back issues of “Slit” might open his eyes to a few things.

  “We’ll get cracking in a moment,” Terry said, looking up from the projector. That set everyone off with more distraction and delaying tactics; Bet rose to head towards the kitchen to make some brews, and Helena decided to escape to the ladies’ loo.

  Once there, she leaned her hands on the edge of a sink and pressed heavily forward, staring at her reflection in the smeary mirror. Get a grip, she told herself. You’ve got to make a good impression, which means not arguing with the man who’s going to be your day to day boss. It means staying on the good side of the woman who’s your mentor. You’ll need Bet’s advice. It means taking everything in, and being nice to people. Not sassy and snarky and clever.

  She laughed to herself, and it sounded loud and strange in the echoing room. Oh shit, I hope the bathroom stalls are empty. She whipped her head around but the pale pink doors were all ajar. She turned back to her reflection and her laughter faded.

  In her effort to make a good impression, she’d applied a careful layer of make-up. She had at least five different shades of foundation at home, and a vast array of eye-shadows and mascaras.

  Not that she’d ever bought any of that for herself. No, each little bottle and vial and tube of shiny, smelly colour had been purchased by her mother and sent on in parcels, the way that other mothers sent their errant daughters packages of food. Helena kept a drawer full of the stuff where it sat, mocking her lack of ladylike instincts.

  And now look at her. What a mess. That was the problem when someone didn’t habitually coat themselves in powders and glosses; it was too easy to forget it was there, on the rare occasions it was worn. Helena looked with dismay at the smear along her eyelid where she’d rubbed her eye in boredom earlier, and the smudge where she’d hidden her yawn behind her hand and dragged down a pink slash of lipstick onto her chin. No wonder Bet and Clive thought she was a bit simple. A “girl,” a “dear.”

  Oh, mum! I know what you meant by all this but… no. Good impressions are one thing, but I have to be myself. What on earth was I thinking? And with that, she soaked a tissue in warm water and made an even worse hash of trying to remove the make-up from her skin.

  The rest of the morning passed uneventfully, and she was grateful for the lowered lights as Terry ran through another pointless slide-show about “customer-focused targets” which seemed to need coloured triangles to illustrate his meaning. She hoped her skin was less blotchy from scrubbing when lunchtime rolled around, but there was nothing she could do about it, so she just ignored the issue. She prided herself on her ability to brazen things out. It had got her through many an awkward situation, and it was funny how the more you acted confident, the more confident you eventually got.

  Although, knowing that confidence was just an act did make her look at other people, and wonder if they were just faking their way through adult life, too.

  Not Clive, though. She slid onto a seat next to him in the dining hall of the conference suite that Gussy’s had hired for this training day, and he greeted her warmly, with another “girl,” but no snide in his voice. He was one of nature’s pure characters; he’d never suffer any crisis of confidence, she was sure.

  And he seemed determined to continue to rib her about choosing to live in Arkthwaite, “the village that the twenty-first century forgot.” She knew, immediately, it was going to be the running gag in the office.

  Well, there were worse things to be teased about, and on one level, it gave her a chance to show she could take it. After all, she’d be the lone female out in the Ingholme branch - all the warehouse and shop floor staff were burly men in coveralls who juggled bits of two-by-four while operating chainsaws with their teeth. She expected a bit of piss-taking.

  “So, how long have you been out in the sticks, then?”

  This was clearly his attempt at polite conversation. She smiled. “Um, not quite two weeks, to be honest. And most of that time I’ve been going backwards and forwards with my stuff, and sorting things out. So I haven’t met anyone yet.”

  “Let me give you some advice. Don’t slag anyone off to anyone else. They’re all bloody related. You think I’m joking, girl! They are!” He shouted over the tabl
e to someone else. “Isn’t that right? Arkthwaite? All inbred?”

  There was general laughter around the room. “It is true. God, you’ve moved there, have you? Good luck.”

  “That’s what we said!” Bet crowed.

  Helena had to laugh. “You guys have really got it in for that place. Honestly, it’s fine. It’s got a village shop and a school, and even a pub.”

  “Yeah,” Clive said, nudging her painfully with his elbow. “And a fucking loopy fruit cake of a lord roaming around, too. Don’t go wandering on the moors! It’s all his land and he’ll probably shoot you in a drunken haze.”

  “A mad, drunken old lord! Tell me more. I’m intrigued.”

  “Not so much of the old, girl. But he’s definitely mad! Up at the manor house, all on his own since he bumped off his old ma.”

  “No way!”

  “He did not,” Bet said. “Else he’d have been arrested.”

  Clive leaned heavily against Helena and spoke in a loud but conspiratorial voice, “No, cos he’s a lord, and they can do what they like. Old boys’ network. Funny dances. Rolled up trouser legs. Handshakes.”

  “Morris dancers?”

  Clive was about to explain more when he caught her expression and guffawed. “Clever girl. You’ll do.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  Sarcasm bounced off his wide, happy face without leaving a mark and he raised a glass of water in toast to her. He said, “I bloody wish this was wine. Terry, Terry! Am I going to need to be pissed to get through this afternoon? What torture have you got planned for us next, then?”

  Terry, Clive’s boss, thinned his lips in disapproval, and took a long time chewing to avoid the answer.

  The afternoon passed more easily. Helena relaxed into the banter and even Bet offered a few helpful words of advice in between the sessions about “corporate environmental responsibility” and “how to use the new purchasing system”. By the time five o’clock rolled around, Helena knew she’d made the right decision. She was going enjoy working with Clive, and even Terry wasn’t so bad. As regional manager with a heap of branches to look after, she wasn’t going to see him very much, anyway.

  There was a flurry of last-minute paperwork to complete. Outside, the light was still strong and the promise of summer was definitely in the air. Helena scribbled her way through the usual post-course questionnaires and made plans in her head for the evening. She’d get home and eat her way through all the stuff in her fridge that was nearly out of date, to make room for when she went shopping after work on Tuesday. Then she’d work on the garden while it was still light. It was only a rented cottage but she’d fallen in love with it as much for the land around it as the location, and she’d bought a pile of magazines that promised to show her how to turn her scrubby back yard into Kew Gardens.

  Next to her on the table, Bet sighed. “I hate these things. What have you put for ‘suggested improvements?’”

  “Ugh.” Helena chewed the end of her plastic pen. “I kinda fudged it. I just wrote that the chairs were a bit too hard.”

  “Copy mine,” Clive suggested, and pushed his paperwork across the table. He’d scrawled “Bollocks” in the box reserved for comments.

  “Thanks.” Bet and Helena made a sideways eye contact and Helena smiled.

  “Got any plans for tonight, dear?” Bet asked as she ticked her way down a checklist of “on a scale of one to five, how well do you think…”

  “Gardening. Yourself?” Hey, Helena thought, this small talk nonsense isn’t too hard.

  “Now, don’t laugh,” Bet began, prompting Clive to put down his pen and ready himself for a superb piss-take opportunity. “My daughter in law is coming over with some friends and we’re having a reeky session.”

  “What, like toiletries and stuff?” Helena asked.

  “Nah,” Clive interrupted with glee, “that’s code for mucky sex toys, isn’t it!”

  “I think not!” Bet ticked the final box with force. “Reeky. Healing. Energy flows and all that. Spirits, probably.”

  “Oh, that’s interesting. Reiki. Have you had it before?”

  “No. I went to have my centres realigned once but it just made me feel wobbly.”

  At that revelation, Clive went purple and nearly spasmed himself off the chair with laughter. “Where had your centres gone to in the first place?”

  “Shut up, Clive. Some of us have an open mind about this sort of thing. Isn’t that right, dear?”

  Helena nodded. “Absolutely. There’s so much we can’t explain through science. I mean, I mean, I believe in science and all that, but it doesn’t account for everything. Does it?”

  “Oh bloody hell,” Clive said, folding up his vandalised paperwork and getting to his feet. “I think you’re going to fit right in, living out in Arkthwaite.”

  “How do you mean?” Helena started to hope for a commune of Reiki practitioners.

  “Hippy trippy weirdos running around in the nip, that’s what I heard.”

  “Really? It’s a tiny village and you’re telling me it’s not only got a mad, drunken lord but a whole coven of pagans?”

  “Oh, don’t listen to him,” Bet said. “Go home, Clive. Don’t upset the poor girl. I’m sure it hasn’t.”

  Oh, I rather hope it has, Helena thought, and wished Clive a cheery goodbye. “Thank you,” she said politely to Bet. “I think it’s time I headed home.”

  * * *

  Another dusty box tied up with fraying ribbon. Another potential abyss of memory and pain to explore. Richard placed it on the wide polished desk and stared at it.

  I wish the daft old bat had thought to label all this stuff. Preferably with labels like “do not open” or “terrible photos” or “this will give you nightmares of guilt and shame.”

  Then he laughed to himself. That second glass of whiskey had made him maudlin and melodramatic, and what was the point of that, when there was no one here to appreciate his drama?

  The study was lit only by a green-shaded lamp on the desk, and the shadows in the corners of the large room didn’t help his mood. He thought about flicking on the main ceiling light, but he was feeling contrary and quite determined to linger in his melancholy. He picked at the knot but it was old, and tight, and he needed scissors. As he ferreted about in a drawer, his phone began to ring, startling him so much in his overstrung state that he nearly stabbed his own hand. He dropped the scissors with a curse and a clatter. Who the hell would ring his mobile at eight pm?

  His first thought was the worst one. The Larches. But a glance at his smartphone screen made him breathe out in slow relief.

  No, not The Larches. Just Billy, an old school mate who had recently moved to Manchester and had rung Richard every other day for the past week, trying to persuade him to head down to the city and “show him the sights.” Richard was fed up of trying to convince Billy that there were no “sights” in Manchester, as far as he was concerned, and even if there were, he had no intention or desire to see them.

  He silenced the phone and returned to his task, slicing through the ribbon before lifting the crumbling cardboard lid as if he was disinterring a body from a freshly unearthed coffin.

  It housed a collection of school reports. At Richard’s selective public school, the teachers had hand-written their reports, and the thin paper spilled a scrawl of praise and condemnation from a decade ago. All that potential. All that potential that other people saw in him and wanted to farm and co-opt for their own purposes. School cricket team - glory for the school! County rugby team - glory for the county! Great career in the city - glory for the family!

  Well, he’d stuffed that last up one, good and proper.

  The school reports ended at the age of eighteen. And there, too, was the offer from Oxford - the reply slip still attached. God, she’d kept this? What, to torture herself with the first sign that her darling son, her only son, was embarking on his terrible decline?

  Bollocks to all this. It needs to be dumped on the fire. He shoved
it all back into the box and pressed the lid back on. The corners were ripped and it didn’t stay closed so he roughly tied the ribbon around it once more. He picked it up and dropped it on the pile of similar boxes that were growing into a tower next to an antique wing-back chair. He’d have a bonfire soon, a great cathartic conflagration of rejection.

  Perhaps he’d invite Billy up and see how he’d changed over the past few years. Or perhaps that would depress him even further. He scrapped the idea almost as soon as he thought it.

  The room pressed in on him and he stretched, rolling his shoulders to unkink the tight muscles that would lead to a headache if he wasn’t careful. He’d spent all day hunched over paperwork, getting things in order for his accountant. He liked to complete his tax return early, and get it out of the way, months before the deadline, and he was pleased to find he was on target. But staying inside all day weighed him down, and even though it was now dark, he decided it was time for a walk.

  The whiskey within had warmed him but he pottered down to the long kitchen to find his thick coat. It was draped over a wooden chair at the table, and his boots were standing on newspaper by the back door in the scullery. It smelled of onions and fresh bread down this end of the large, rambling manor house. It always seemed to smell that way, no matter what he had been cooking. He turned his head away from the pile of dirty dishes; he loathed an unkempt kitchen but that could all wait until tomorrow.

  He followed the familiar path up through the yard and past the stable block. Only one of the loose boxes was occupied, and he paused by the half-door to rub Nerada’s nose. The bay mare snickered, warm and reassuring in the darkness. “Tomorrow,” he told her. “We’ll go out for a long ride.”

  Then he pressed onwards, following the line of the stone wall, keeping it to his right. The path was narrow but worn. He walked this way almost every day, at some point, and the night held no fear for him. Ahead of him, the shadowy bulk of Near Moor rose up blackly against the dark blue sky and he turned off as the stone wall branched, clambering over a stile and making for the landmark of a cairn on the rising horizon.