The Cold Hand of Malice Read Online Free

time we met you didn’t even notice me,’ she reminded him. ‘The next time we met you took me to lunch, then told me I had to pay for mine because I was on expenses.’
    He grinned. ‘Well, things have changed a bit since then,’ he told her, ‘and as for what I was thinking just now, I was thinking how lucky I am to have you.’
    Grace eyed him with mock scepticism as she stood up and began clearing the table. ‘They always say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,’ she said, ‘but I have the feeling that this is leading up to something?’
    ‘It is,’ he told her as he got up and came round the table. He placed his hands lightly on her shoulders and held her at arm’s length. ‘I don’t know what sort of day you’ve had,’ he said, ‘but mine’s been very tiring, so why don’t we leave the clearing up till morning and have an early night? What do you say?’
    Grace’s eyes danced mischievously as she pulled away. ‘I’d say you were trying to get me into bed, DCI Paget, and I suspect your intentions are not entirely honourable.’
    ‘Is that a yes or a no?’
    Grace grinned. ‘You don’t get anything for free in this world,’ she told him. ‘You should know that by now; there’s always a price to pay.’
    ‘Which is . . .?’ he asked cautiously.
    ‘We clear the table and do the washing up before we go to bed, because there is no way I want to face this lot when I come downstairs tomorrow morning. So, the sooner we get them done, the sooner you can have your way with me.’
    Moira Ballantyne slid the letter into the envelope and sealed it. It was shorter than usual, but she’d found it hard to concentrate on the weekly letter to her mother after the encounter with Laura Holbrook last night. She’d tried to dismiss it from her mind; tried to tell herself that things would straighten themselves out between them, but Laura’s accusation had been niggling away in the back of her mind all day, refusing to go away.
    And the more she’d thought about it, the angrier she’d become.
    Laura had all but accused her of having an affair with Simon; right there in the club last night. She hadn’t mentioned Moira by name, but by the way she had gone on about ‘some people’ getting their claws into other people’s husbands, then pretending to be ‘little Miss Innocent’, she had made her meaning very clear, and Moira could just imagine the sort of gossip that had broken out the minute they left the club.
    It would have been bad enough if it had been true, but it wasn’t. Not that she and Simon hadn’t had their moments in the past, she thought guiltily, but that was over long ago. It had happened at a time when she and Trevor were going through a rough patch, in fact she had given serious consideration to divorce. The work wasn’t coming in the way it had; Trevor was depressed, and the more he worried about the situation the worse things became. Bills were piling up; nothing was going right, and they’d fallen into the habit of sniping at each other over the most trivial things. She knew she’d been bitchy – unbearably so, if she were honest – and Trevor had finally withdrawn into himself and wouldn’t even talk to her unless it was unavoidable.
    And then Simon Holbrook had asked them to design a security system for his new premises. It wasn’t a big job; the premises weren’t large, but it was a lucrative one, because Simon wanted the best system going. It had meant that Moira had had to spend a lot of time on site, much of it in Simon’s company as he explained in painstaking detail exactly what he wanted. But with his scientific background, and being the kind of man he was, he had insisted on having every circuit explained to him in detail as they went along, and had in fact shown them how they could miniaturize some of the equipment they were using. He had also come up with some interesting and innovative ideas about where to conceal the cameras.
    The new job had been