The Catalyst by Angela Jardine Read Free Book Online Page A

somehow. Hastily he scrambled to his feet and set off through tangled vegetation towards her.
    Sunny meanwhile was in an ecstasy of feeling for the time and place, totally oblivious of the panicking man laboriously making his way towards her through the briars until he arrived, panting on the rocky scrubland below her.
    ‘Er … ’scuse me … miss?’ he said softly so as not to scare her into any precipitate movement. As if coming back from somewhere far away, Sunny blinked and looked down in surprise at the disheveled man knee-deep in undergrowth below her. She frowned fleetingly in the dazzle of sunlight to focus better on him.
    It did not occur to her to be afraid of him despite the fact she was meeting a strange man in a lonely place. Perhaps it would have been better for her if she had felt fright and taken warning from it but then, as she realised later, all hindsight is twenty-twenty.
    For his part, Jimmy Fisher felt uncomfortably wrong-footed by the woman’s frown and his own misreading of the situation. It had now become perfectly obvious to him that not only was the woman not going to fall but that she was supremely confident of her ability to balance right on the edge of rocks overhanging the sea.
    He felt foolish now and, unable to help himself, he felt he should let her in on his annoyance at the whole day.
    ‘Well, sod you, lady … I was worried you might fall!’
    He turned away abruptly but his bad-tempered leave-taking was halted by a peal of laughter that could have been infectious if he hadn’t been so set on being angry.
    Of course, it could all have ended there but it didn’t. Fate had only just begun her tantalising game with these two players. The moment Jimmy Fisher turned his furious face back to Sunny Smith he was lost, they both were.
    Surely this just another woman in a long line of women for Jimmy Fisher? How could this unkempt, self-indulgent man be a saviour for Sunny Smith in her self-imposed decline of restless wandering? Perhaps even Fate had no idea of the outcome at this point but the one thing you did know about Fate was that you never knew.
    All Jimmy Fisher knew at this moment was that he was looking into the slanting green eyes of some enchanted woman and he drowned in them as surely as if he had been lured away by mermaids.
    All Sunny Smith knew was that an inordinately angry man, all heaving chest and sulky mouth, was standing below her and, instantly recognising the small boy beneath the posturing adult, she had not been able to stop herself from laughing. Her laughter however was short-lived as the man turned away again indignantly and strode off up the cliff path. Immediately contrite, she scrambled down from her perch, anxious now to mend his hurt feelings.
    So, intent on watching the man’s back as it radiated annoyance at her, it was only a matter of time before she failed to negotiate a particularly treacherous patch of mud on the pathway.

 
    Chapter 5
     
    Jenny Lawrence had had enough. In reality she had had much more than enough. She had suspected Jimmy was messing around as usual but finding an explicit email describing a gasp-by-gasp cyber-sex session in the business mail from yet another over-sexed tart would not have been how she would have wanted to have her worst fears confirmed.
    Desperate to get away from his lying face she had driven into Dehwelyans in a fury of red-hot blood and ragged breathing, frightened by the intensity of her anger. She had never remembered feeling quite as furious as this before, even in the early days of their relationship when she realised what living with Jimmy Fisher was really all about. When his ‘flings’, as he called them, had started.
    In the early days she had usually been distraught rather than angry at his callous openness, his lack of willingness to hide the fact that he would be away for a night or two. Although he never said where he was going the smell of cheap perfume was the giveaway and he would never take the