CHAPTER ONE
‘YOU can’t do this. What if you get caught? He could have you arrested.’
Daisy Dean paused in the process of scoping out her neighbour’s ludicrously high garden wall and slanted her best friend, Juno, a long-suffering look.
‘He won’t catch me,’ Daisy replied in the same hushed tones. ‘I’m practically invisible with all this gear on.’
She looked down at the clothes she’d borrowed from her fellow tenants at the Bedsit Co-op next door. Goodness, she looked like Tinkerbell the Terminator decked out in fourteen-year-old Cal’s sagging black Levi’s, his tiny mother Jacie’s navy blue polo neck and Juno’s two-sizes-too-small bovver boots.
She’d never been this invisible in her entire life. The one thing Daisy had inherited from her reckless and irresponsible mother was Lily Dean’s in-your-face dress sense. Daisy didn’t do monotones—and she didn’t believe in hiding her light under a bushel.
She frowned. Except when she was on a mission to find her landlady’s missing cat.
‘Stop worrying, Juno, and give me the beanie.’ She held out her hand and stared back up at the wall, which seemed to have grown several feet since she’d last looked at it. ‘You’ll have to give me a boost.’
Juno groaned, slapping the black woollen cap into Daisy’s outstretched palm. ‘This better not make me an accessory after the fact or something.’ She bent over and looped her fingers together in a sling.
‘Don’t be silly.’ Daisy shoved her curls under the cap and tugged it over her ears. ‘It’s not a crime. Not really.’
‘Of course it’s a crime.’ Juno straightened from her crouch, her round, pretty face looking like the good fairy in a strop. ‘It’s called trespassing.’
‘These are extenuating circumstances,’ Daisy whispered as a picture of their landlady Mrs Valdermeyer’s distraught face popped into her mind. ‘Mr Pootles has been missing for well over a fortnight. And our antisocial new neighbour’s the only one within a mile radius who hasn’t had the decency to search his back garden.’ She propped her hands on her hips. ‘Mr Pootles could be starving to death and it’s up to us to rescue him.’
‘Maybe he looked and didn’t find anything?’ Juno said, her voice rising in desperation.
‘I doubt that. Believe me, he’s not the type to lose sleep over a missing cat.’
‘How do you know? You’ve never even met the guy,’ Juno murmured, wedging the tiniest slither of doubt into Daisy’s crusading zeal.
‘That’s only because he’s been avoiding us,’ Daisy pointed out, the slither dissolving.
Their mysterious new neighbour had bought the double-fronted Georgian wreck three months ago, and had managed to gut it and rehab it in record time. But despite all Daisy’s overtures since he’d moved in two weeks ago—the note she’d posted through his door and the message she’d relayed to his cleaning lady—he’d made no attempt to greet his neighbours at Mrs Valdermeyer’s Bedsit Co-operative. Or join the search for the missing Mr Pootles.
In fact he’d been downright rude. When she’d dropped off a plate of her special home-made brownies the day before in a last ditch attempt to get his attention, he hadn’t even returned the plate, let alone thanked her for them. Clearly the man was too rich and self-centred to have any time for the likes of them—or their problems.
And then there were his dark, striking good looks to be considered. ‘All you have to do is look at him,’ Daisy continued, ‘to see he’s a you-know-what-hole with a capital A.’
Okay, so she’d only caught glimpses of the guy as he was striding down his front steps towards the snazzy maroon gas-guzzler he kept parked out front. At least six feet two, leanly muscled and what she guessed most people would term ruggedly handsome, the guy was what she termed full of himself. Even from a distance he radiated enough testosterone to make a woman’s ovaries stand up and take notice—and she was sure he knew it.
Not that Daisy’s ovaries had taken any notice, of course. Well, not much anyway.
Luckily for Daisy, she was now completely immune to men like her new neighbour. Arrogant, self-absorbed charmers who thought of women as playthings. Men like Gary, who?
??d sidled into her life a year ago with his come-hither smile, his designer suits and his clever hands and sidled right back out again three months later taking a good portion of her pride and a tiny chunk of her heart with him.
Daisy had made a pact with herself then and there—that she’d never fall prey to some good-looking playboy again. What she needed was a nice regular guy. A man of substance and integrity, who would come to love her and respect her, who wanted the same things out of life she wanted and preferably didn’t know the difference between a designer label and a supermarket own brand.
Juno gave an irritated huff, interrupting Daisy’s moment of truth. ‘I still don’t understand why you haven’t just asked the guy about that stupid cat.’
A pulse of heat pumped under Daisy’s skin. ‘I tried to catch him the few times I spotted him, but he drives off so fast I would have had to be an Olympic sprinter.’
She’d suffer the tortures of hell before she’d admit the truth. That she’d been the tiniest bit intimidated by him, enough not to relish confronting him in person.
Juno sighed and bent down, linking her fingers together. ‘Fine, but don’t blame me if you get done for breaking and entering.’
‘Stop panicking.’ Daisy placed a foot in Juno’s palms. ‘I’m sure he’s not even home. His Jeep’s not parked out front. I checked.’
If she’d thought for a moment he might actually be in residence the butterflies waltzing about in her belly would have started pogoing like punk rockers. ‘I’ll be super-discreet. He’ll never even know I was there.’
‘There’s one teeny-weeny problem with that scenario,’ Juno said dryly. ‘You don’t do discreet, remember.’
‘I can if I’m desperate,’ Daisy replied. Or at least she’d do her best.
Ignoring Juno’s derisive snort, Daisy reached up to climb the wall and felt the skintight polo neck rise up her midriff. She looked down to see a wide strip of white flesh reflecting in the streetlamp opposite and caught a glimpse of her red satin undies where the jeans sagged.
‘Blast.’ She dropped her arm and bounced down.
‘What’s the matter now?’ Juno whispered.
‘My tummy shows when I lift my arms.’
‘So?’
Daisy frowned at her friend. ‘So it totally ruins the camouflage effect.’ She tapped her finger on her bottom lip. ‘I know, I’ll take off my bra.’
‘What on earth for?’ Juno snapped, getting more agitated by the second.
‘The material’s catching on the lace—it won’t rise up as much.’
‘But you can’t,’ Juno replied. ‘You’ll bounce.’
‘It’ll only be for a minute.’ Daisy unclipped the bra and wriggled it out of one sleeve. She passed the much-loved concoction of satin, lace and underwiring to Juno.
Juno dangled it from her fingertips. ‘What is this obsession you have with hooker underwear?’
‘You’re just jealous,’ Daisy replied, turning back to the wall. Juno had always had a bit of a complex about her barely B-cups in Daisy’s opinion.
She put her foot in Juno’s sling and felt her breasts sway erotically under the confining fabric. Thank goodness no one would get close enough to spot her unfettered state. She’d always been proud to call herself a feminist, but she was way too well endowed to be one of the burn-your-bra variety.
‘Right.’ Daisy took a deep breath of the heavy, honeysuckle-flavoured air. ‘I’m off.’
Grabbing hold of the top, she hauled herself up, her nipples tightening as she rubbed against the brick. Throwing her leg over, she straddled the wall with a soft grunt.
She peered through the leaves of a large chestnut tree and scanned the shadows of their neighbour’s garden. Moonlight reflected off the windows at the back of the house. Daisy let out the breath she’d been holding. Phew, he definitely wasn’t in.
‘I still can’t believe you’re actually going to do this.’ Juno scowled up at her from the shrubbery.