Read Online A Night on the Orient Express by Veronica Henry - Free Book Online

well and be set up in her own home and at least be thinking about starting a family. That’s what you did if you stayed in Shallowford. Somehow, though, she had missed the boat and now all the eligible men had been snapped up.
    Leaving only the likes of Danny McVeigh . . .
    Alfredo brought out a tray of tiny liqueur glasses filled with Limoncello. Just as he did every year. They were complimentary. Imogen suddenly found it an empty gesture. What was a quarter of a bottle of sickly Italian liqueur when she and her friends had spent several hundred quid on food and wine? Was she supposed to fall over herself with gratitude?
    She knocked back a glass nevertheless. It wasn’t like her to be so bitter and cynical. Not at all. But she wanted to numb the disappointment she felt.
    How could she have imagined that Danny would come? Because he was right – he wouldn’t fit in with all her friends, with their perfect hair-dos and their tasteful little floral dresses and fitted cardigans. He must have sensed that she wanted him to turn up just to get a reaction. She couldn’t deny that she’d been looking forward to the expressions on their faces when he walked in, lean and mean in his jeans and leather jacket. She’d wanted to show him off, to shock them. He knew that. And to punish her he hadn’t turned up. Besides, why would he care what she wanted? Men like Danny weren’t programmed to please women. They pleased themselves.
    She got up from the table and walked to the cloakroom. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw unshed tears at the back of her green eyes. It wouldn’t work in a million years. It was a game, that was all. Danny McVeigh was just a toy for a bored thirty-year-old; she was just another notch on his bedpost: a conquest. Yes, they had chemistry – her head spun at the memory of what they had done in bed over the past few months – but that was no basis for a serious relationship.
    She re-applied her lipstick, ruffled her shoulder-length curls and gave herself a stern look in the mirror.
    ‘Walk away, Imo,’ she told herself. ‘You knew you were playing with fire when you started this.’
    She thought back to the day Danny had walked back into her life. The sleepy Berkshire town of Shallowford still followed the tradition of early closing on a Wednesday afternoon, which most people found irritating but Imogen was eternally grateful for. It was the day she rearranged paintings in the gallery, keeping the sign on the door saying ‘Closed’, but beckoning people in if they pressed their nose to the window. It was surprising how many customers bought something when they thought they had been given preferential treatment.
    When she saw the man outside staring intently at the Ruskin Spear on the easel in the window, she gave him a wave to say ‘Come on in.’
    He pushed the door open. ‘You’re not closed, then?’
    Imogen smothered a gasp. Now he was standing in front of her she recognised him, one hand in the pocket of his jeans, his dark hair falling across his eyes. He was so tall, well over six foot. And broad. She felt a tiny flicker of fear.
    Danny had been two years above Imogen at school. Broodingly handsome, surly, rebellious, he’d been a source of fascination to the girls in Imogen’s class, who’d held endless breathless conversations about his attractions. He always had a girl in tow, but rarely the same one. There were rumours about him drug-dealing, having an affair with the Latin teacher (not that he studied Latin, but it seems his charms beguiled even the cerebral), shoplifting, fighting . . . He was suspended twice before finally walking out the week before his GCSEs. The school was a duller place without him. He was something to look at during assembly.
    Imogen had never really come into contact with Danny at school, but he had given her a lift home from a party once, when she had missed the last bus back from Filbury to Shallowford. The cheap wine she had drunk was swirling in