1848453051 by Linda Kavanagh Read Free Book Online Page B

painful. But for now, the beautiful diamond and gold ring had given her new confidence in their future together.

C HAPTER 9
    T he following morning, Laura awoke alone in the apartment she shared with Jeff. Sitting up in bed with a jolt, she recalled the events of the night before, remembering that her husband had been kept in hospital overnight, after the near-tragic incident at the restaurant.
    Jumping out of bed, she quickly showered and dressed, wondering if her strange feelings from the day before yesterday had been a genuine portent of what was to come. She shivered. The incident had been one of the most horrific in her life – and that was saying something, given that she’d already endured the tragic loss of her family, been uprooted and sent to a new home and school, and then nearly died underwater two years earlier.
    Munching toast in the kitchen, Laura went over what had happened. She was mystified – given his health problem, surely Jeff wouldn’t have been so careless? His adrenaline pen was a lifesaver, and would have been more important to him than anything else. How could he have mislaid it?
    Abandoning her second slice of toast, Laura decided to turn detective, heading into their bedroom once again and specifically to the wardrobe, where Jeff would have taken out his best suit and transferred the pen from his workday clothes. Finding nothing in the pocket of the jacket he’d worn during the day, she surveyed the wardrobe from top to bottom, checking theshirts stacked on the shelves at the side, the tie rack drawers on the bottom.
    As her eyes scanned the floor of the wardrobe, they alighted on Jeff’s shoes, all expensive leather, all neatly in a row. And there, sitting in one of them, was his adrenaline pen.
    Laura grabbed it, feeling angry at what she considered to be Jeff’s appalling carelessness. Hopefully after what had happened at the restaurant, he’d start to take his health issues seriously in future! He must have thought that he’d slid the pen into his pocket, but it had missed, falling instead into one of his shoes on the wardrobe floor. To test her theory, Laura stood exactly where Jeff would have been, and deliberately dropped the pen. When it fell silently into one of his shoes, she felt vindicated. She’d confirmed that the shoe’s soft leather would have dulled any sound that might have alerted Jeff to what had happened.
    Leaving the bedroom, she headed back to the kitchen, and made a quick call to Greta, the Sociology Department’s secretary, explaining what had transpired the night before, and asking her to get another lecturer to cover for her that morning. With assurances from Greta that she didn’t need to worry, Laura hung up.
    It also dawned on her that since Jeff wouldn’t be going to work that day, she ought to ring his place of business and let them know what had happened.
    Normally, she contacted Jeff by mobile phone, and she was embarrassed to admit that she didn’t actually know the phone number for the stockbrokers where he worked. In the study, she scanned the phone book, but she couldn’t find any entry for Denham, Goodwood & Clayton. She then turned on her computer and typed the name into a search engine, but there didn’t appear to be a listing for any company with that name.
    Could she have put the company names in the wrong order– perhaps it was Goodwood Denham & Clayton? Typing in the names in this order, once again she came up with nothing. And the phone book again didn’t yield any company of that name either. Even trying the names in several different combinations didn’t yield any useful information.
    Puzzled, Laura bit her lip. There had to be a very good reason why this was happening. Perhaps the company had changed its name, and Jeff had forgotten to tell her? It sounded rather far-fetched, but Laura was prepared to consider anything. After all, Jeff went off to work every morning. If he didn’t go to Denham, Goodwood & Clayton, where on earth