‘Why don’t you offer to help?’
‘I’m not a mechanic. Are you a member of the AA?’ He seemed to expect a negative answer, and he got one.
‘Well, what do you suggest?’ Julia asked, staring him in the eye, leaving him in no doubt as to what she suggested.
‘Will the nearest petrol station do?’
‘It’ll have to, won’t it,’ snapped Julia. Honestly, he had no need to sound so reluctant. She couldn’t help adding: ‘And I promise I won’t mug you on the way.’
He didn’t deign to answer that. He helped her carry her bags to the Maserati and slung them easily into the front boot. Julia had never been within touching distance of such an elegant vehicle. She sank into the soft leather of the passenger seat and the door shut with a solid clunk. The Hulk slid in beside her and the engine purred to life at a touch, the merest throb of sound behind her head. The interior was beautifully warm and Julia shrugged out of her jacket before she fastened the retracting seatbelt.
‘What is it?’ she murmured, eyes wandering over the impressive dash. ‘I mean, I know it’s a Maserati of some kind.’
‘Bora.’ The wheel slid through the large hands as they gained speed. It was like gliding. If she hadn’t looked out of the window Julia wouldn’t have known they were going uphill or following more tortuous curves. There was no squealing of tyres or sideways drift, just smooth power.
‘What does it do?’ she asked.
‘Everything.’
‘I mean, what speed?’
He didn’t take his eyes off the road. ‘Are you really interested?’
‘I’m interested in everything,’ said Julia truthfully.
‘Allright. It’s a four-thousand-seven-hundred-and-nineteen cc VS with quadruple overhead camshafts and four Weber carburettors. It develops three-hundred-and-thirty five bhp at six-thousand rpm. Top speed over two-hundred-and-seventy kph.’
‘Oh.’ Julia absorbed the double-Dutch. ‘How fast have you gone in her?’
‘Fast enough.’
Julia sighed. ‘I’m not an undercover cop, you know. I only asked.’
‘One-hundred-and-sixty kph.’
‘What did it feel like?’ she asked curiously. She couldn’t imagine him getting a thrill out of speed, or anything else for that matter. Too stolid.
‘Interesting.’
She laughed, turning in her seat to study him. What a challenge he presented. She would love to make him smile, get him to show a bit of animation in that poker face. People revealed themselves in smiles, in what they smiled at. To Julia it was a natural condition.
There was a lot of him to reveal. The car was a two-seater, both of them pushed well back but while Julia’s legs kicked into space, her companion’s flexed easily at the pedals. He must be six foot four at least, she decided, and if it wasn’t for the fact that she didn’t go for big men she could find him quite attractive. His face was strong-boned and square-jawed, the heavy-lidded eyes rimmed with dark brown lashes and topped with heavy dark brows. Perhaps his hair had once been dark brown too but there was no trace of it now, it was completely grey, trimmed stylishly short, and very straight. His skin was very pale and smooth, with very few lines to mar it, almost like a mask. Julia wondered what the man behind it was really like.
‘You never even asked why I put my brakes on,’ she said at last. ‘Aren’t you interested to know what made you crash into me?’
‘I know already.’ He continued, conversationally, ‘And did you know that Mynahs are an introduced bird? Their numbers are reaching nuisance proportions, at expense of our native species.’
Julia’s jaw dropped at the callous attitude. ‘You mean that the world might be better off if I flattened a few with my car,’ she said hotly. ‘Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t like killing anything, nuisance or not. For that matter you might say the same of people!’
To her satisfaction he seemed momentarily startled. ‘You have a point,’ he murmured. ‘But if the crunch came, I hope you’d choose men over Mynahs.’
‘The crunch did come, owing to your poor driving,’ Julia needled, unwilling to accede that he, too, had a point. But her innate honesty impelled her to say, grumpily, ‘Maybe it was dumb, but it was a split-second reaction. It didn’t occur to me just to run the poor thing down.’
‘Do your parents know where you are?’
The sudden question stumped her for a moment until she realised his mistake. She grinned to herself. Ben had hit the nail on the head with his description of her appearance. Though her youthful appearance annoyed her on occasion, like when men treated her over-protectively, or condescendingly, it had advantages too. It gave her the element of surprise. The ‘small body, small mind’ brigade were usually shocked to find that the pretty blonde doll wasn’t as gullible as she looked. Perhaps this man thought that he could get away with blaming her inexperience for the accident.
‘Of course they know where I am,’ she said airily. ‘I do have a licence, if that’s what you’re thinking. I am over sixteen you know.’