Read Online Prey to All by Natasha Cooper - Free Book Online Page A

light falling on the lines around his mouth and eyes, and his hand elegantly propping up his head, coincidentally hiding any double-chin, he could have been her own age. And he was a good-looking man.
    ‘May I ask a very impertinent question?’
    As he looked at her, his full mouth thinned. He took away his hand. Trish saw he didn’t actually have a double chin and felt mean.
    ‘Debbie and I did have a brief affair,’ he said, as though admitting he’d once shaken her hand. ‘If that’s what you wanted to know.’
    ‘It was, in fact.’
    ‘I thought so.’ He laughed lightly, unconvincingly. ‘I’d be glad if you could keep it under your chapeau. Not that it’s particularly important. I mean, it was donkey’s years ago, neither of us was married or even attached at the time, so there’s no scandal.’
    ‘It’s all right,’ Trish said at once. ‘I’m not about to leak your past to the tabloids. Why would I? I just want to know where I am.’ She smiled a little. ‘It helps when assessing evidence.’
    ‘I’ll bet. Debbie was lovely then – not beautiful, mind, and a bit, well …’ He laughed. ‘Stocky is the word that comes to mind. But kind and very gentle. I’d been going through a tough time, and she did a lot for me.’
    What could the woman he’d described have offered a man like him, Trish wondered, other than the obvious sexual satisfaction?
    ‘I’ve always known I owed her for that. If I can help her now, it’ll do something to settle my debt.’ His smile was even better this time, more grown-up and less yearning. ‘Hence this meeting with one of the sharpest lawyers of her generation.’
    ‘Tell me what she was like then,’ Trish said, discounting the flattery.
    She watched him as he talked, liking him better as he forgot to pose, losing himself in a description of a warm, friendly woman, not obviously attractive and clearly rather lonely. Trish wondered if Deb’s appeal for him could have had anything to do with the way her uncertainties boosted his own confidence. It seemed pretty unassailable these days, but there was something about him, something about the way he obviously liked to collect admiration, that made her suspicious.
    ‘What do you know about her family?’ Trish asked, when he paused.
    ‘Not a lot. I never met the parents. It wasn’t that kind of
affair. They were stuck in the depths of wherever it was – Suffolk?’
    ‘Norfolk.’
    ‘Of course. And they never came to London. Her awful father didn’t approve of the expense or something like that. But I did meet the sister once or twice.’
    ‘The perfect Cordelia? Good. I want to know about her. How did she strike you?’
    ‘A hard-faced cow, to be frank. But rather beautiful.’
    ‘Not an Ugly Sister, then?’
    ‘No. But, if you ask me, Goneril or Regan would have suited her better than Cordelia. I’ve always thought it was she, rather than the father, who was the cause of most of Debbie’s problems.’
    Trish wasn’t sure she agreed. Deb’s own account of her father made him sound unbearable to live with, and she’d been surprisingly unvitriolic about her sister, considering what Cordelia had said about her in court.
    Even her name had caused Deb problems there, Trish was sure. Deb herself probably hadn’t realised it, but Trish was well aware of the way the lawyers and the judge would have reacted to the thought of a father-loving woman called Cordelia. Everything in their subconscious minds would have made them long to believe her.
    ‘It sounds to me,’ she said, teasing him to see how he reacted, ‘as though Cordelia didn’t succumb to your charm.’
    ‘You could say that. She had a lot of offers then, of course. Even so, it was a blow.’ Chaze’s laugh was friendly and it sounded honest. It smoothed away the edges of Trish’s earlier dislike.
    She wasn’t surprised that Deb had fallen for him. Bruised by her father’s contempt, she must have been wonderfully reassured by the discovery