Pathway to Tomorrow by Sheila Claydon Read Free Book Online Page A

going to help me?” Her voice was little more than a hopeful whisper.
    He nodded.  “Oh yes, I’ll help you if Jodie will let me, but you’ll have to work hard.  It’s a tough life out there, with a lot of competition.”
    She nodded, her face tight with determination.  “I’ll do whatever it takes and nothing Jodie says will stop me.”
     
    * * *
     
    Marcus sighed as he watched her wheel her bicycle towards the gate. What had he let himself in for?  Just when he and Jodie had reached a truce of sorts he was going to have to unpick it all again by telling her it would be a crime to silence her sister’s voice. Somehow he was going to have to persuade her to ignore her own fears and give Izzie a chance.
    He looked at the numbers Izzie had scribbled on the pad on his desk.  One was Jodie’s phone number.  His hand hovered over his cell. Should he call her now or should he wait until she’d had a chance to talk to Izzie? An inexplicable need to hear her voice overruled common sense and he keyed in her number.
     
    * * *
     
    Jodie didn’t recognize the number that flashed up on the screen when her phone rang. She knew it was Marcus Lewis as soon as he spoke though.
    “I don’t want you to say it,” she told him, feeling her stomach plummet. “I don’t want you to tell me how good she was. I don’t want to think about it.”
    Hearing her echo his own thoughts, he gave a wry smile.  “I won’t then, but that’s not why I called. I called to invite you to lunch.”
    Her silence was unnerving. Had he made a mistake? Was it just his imagination that had persuaded him the attraction was mutual?
    “If it’s not convenient now then we can make it later, when I come back.”
    “You’re going away again?”  His spirits rose when he heard the flatness in her voice.
    “Yes, for six weeks. I have to go to America.”
    “What happens to Luke when you’re away?”
    Surprised by her question, he hesitated before he answered.  “He stays at home in London with his care workers, just like he does when I come up here.”
    “How does he cope when you’re not there?”
    “Pretty well. I’m fairly incidental to his life. All he cares about is his daily routine.”
    He wondered if he was imagining disapproval in the silence that followed.  Then she sighed. “Okay. I’ll meet you for lunch but I’ve only got half an hour so it’ll have to be a sandwich. I’ll see you in the bar at the Station Inn at twelve-thirty.”
    He frowned as he pushed his cell phone back into his pocket. Somehow she’d managed to turn his lunch invitation around so that she seemed to be doing him a favor.  It was almost as if she had only agreed to join him because she felt sorry for him. He gave a wry smile as he remembered all the girls who used to throw their underwear at him in the days when he still performed on stage, and the others who waited outside gigs for hours, even days, to get a glimpse of him arriving.  And yet here he was, reduced to feeling grateful, because a spiky woman who barely reached his shoulder was grudgingly prepared to spend half-an-hour with him; a woman who had caused him nothing but irritation and extra work ever since he met her; a woman who hadn’t had a clue about him or his music until he closed her damned bridleway.
     
    * * *
     
    Marcus arrived at the inn twenty minutes early and sat at the bar nursing a glass of beer. It was quiet. No lunchtime crowd, which suited him. He glanced at the menu. All good rustic fare: a ploughman’s platter with local cheeses; sandwiches with homemade bread; vegetable soup with fresh rolls.  He wondered what Jodie would choose. Then he wondered if she often had lunch at the inn. Then he wondered why he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He was still wondering that when she pushed open the door and stepped inside.
    Apart from dispensing with her riding hat she had made no concessions at all. No makeup, same clothes, same tidy plait down the centre of her