When Good Friends Go Bad Read Online Free
the rhododendrons.'
When she was young, her parents had employed a handyman to do some light maintenance work around their house who supposedly was deaf. Georgina used to turn her back on him and say rude words, like bottom and wee-wee and fart. And then one day her mother asked her if she'd been rude to Dick as he could hear perfectly well with his hearing aid in.
But this chappie didn't seem to comprehend a single word. Communication this morning had been nigh-on impossible, and Georgina was far too stretched to exhaust herself trying to tell him he'd cut the wrong hedge. Where was Aiden when she needed him? She shouldn't have to handle irritations like this overripe, sweat-stained clod in filthy dungarees, grinning inanely as he held out a grimy hand with a barn-load of manure under his fingernails.
Inwardly huffing with annoyance, lady-of-the-manor expression on her face, she dug in her purse for some notes, wondering why her husband had chosen to hire the village idiot. Did he do these things purposely to wind her up? Well, he could darn well unhire him. With what she was paying out, it had to be possible to find a gardener who at least knew his trade, challenged or not.
Sighing, she returned to her huge desk, littered with sketches. Daylight from the floor-to-ceiling bay window streamed on to what she called her 'creative jumble'. She hadn't yet switched on her exorbitantly expensive computer loaded with hi-tech drawing programs. When it came to brainstorming she still preferred paper and pencil.
The phone was ringing again. She listened, willing herself not to answer, six rings, seven, then silence. Five minutes later a tall figure was at the double glass-paned doors to her office, holding out a glass of Perrier with a slice of lime, looking relaxed and ravishingly Byronic in cream chinos and a half-buttoned shirt, a red Kabbalah string tied around his wrist.
'That was Heal's,' he said. 'I told them you were just about there. Couple more weeks at the most.'
'A couple of weeks!' Georgina shrieked at a pitch that almost shattered the bulb in her Tiffany lamp. 'I've barely started the blasted thing.'
'Oh, come on.' He moved over to her, placing the water on the desk and pushing back her hair with a hand chilly from holding the glass. Stooping, he bent to kiss the back of her neck. Despite herself, Georgina felt a familiar thrill of pleasure. 'A few poxy sheets and towels? You could do that in your sleep.'
'But that's exactly it.' Georgina heard her voice grow operatic again as she swatted his chin from her shoulder. 'I don't get any sleep. I'm completely exhausted, lying awake till bloody dawn, worrying about all this.'
'Hmm, I thought I heard you roaming the halls like some poor lost ghost last night.' He opened one of the balls of scrawled-over paper on the desk, revealed a drawing of a butterfly, and crumpled it up again, tossing it into the waste-paper basket in one neat shot. 'Look, Georgie, you don't want to push yourself to a breakdown. We have all those designers on staff, why don't you get one of them to . . .'
'No!' Forcing a smile, she tried to battle her rising hysteria. 'I won't do it. I can't. They're paying for Georgina Giordani and Georgina Giordani it shall be.'
Chewing the end of her HB pencil, she experienced a rush of despair, the same terror that hit her at the start of every project, only this time it was worse than ever. No matter that she was a thousand times more successful than that nameless art teacher who'd once sneered at her labours for being 'technically accurate but lacking in soul'. For all that Giordani Designs were rapidly heading towards Laura Ashley status, for all that she had a mini-empire of over a hundred employees in her converted Canary Wharf offices overseeing every aspect of her celebrated lines of clothing, linens, bedspreads, blinds, pillowcases, here she was skulking in her seventeenth-century manor house, relying on her home help to fend off all callers.
Inside
When she was young, her parents had employed a handyman to do some light maintenance work around their house who supposedly was deaf. Georgina used to turn her back on him and say rude words, like bottom and wee-wee and fart. And then one day her mother asked her if she'd been rude to Dick as he could hear perfectly well with his hearing aid in.
But this chappie didn't seem to comprehend a single word. Communication this morning had been nigh-on impossible, and Georgina was far too stretched to exhaust herself trying to tell him he'd cut the wrong hedge. Where was Aiden when she needed him? She shouldn't have to handle irritations like this overripe, sweat-stained clod in filthy dungarees, grinning inanely as he held out a grimy hand with a barn-load of manure under his fingernails.
Inwardly huffing with annoyance, lady-of-the-manor expression on her face, she dug in her purse for some notes, wondering why her husband had chosen to hire the village idiot. Did he do these things purposely to wind her up? Well, he could darn well unhire him. With what she was paying out, it had to be possible to find a gardener who at least knew his trade, challenged or not.
Sighing, she returned to her huge desk, littered with sketches. Daylight from the floor-to-ceiling bay window streamed on to what she called her 'creative jumble'. She hadn't yet switched on her exorbitantly expensive computer loaded with hi-tech drawing programs. When it came to brainstorming she still preferred paper and pencil.
The phone was ringing again. She listened, willing herself not to answer, six rings, seven, then silence. Five minutes later a tall figure was at the double glass-paned doors to her office, holding out a glass of Perrier with a slice of lime, looking relaxed and ravishingly Byronic in cream chinos and a half-buttoned shirt, a red Kabbalah string tied around his wrist.
'That was Heal's,' he said. 'I told them you were just about there. Couple more weeks at the most.'
'A couple of weeks!' Georgina shrieked at a pitch that almost shattered the bulb in her Tiffany lamp. 'I've barely started the blasted thing.'
'Oh, come on.' He moved over to her, placing the water on the desk and pushing back her hair with a hand chilly from holding the glass. Stooping, he bent to kiss the back of her neck. Despite herself, Georgina felt a familiar thrill of pleasure. 'A few poxy sheets and towels? You could do that in your sleep.'
'But that's exactly it.' Georgina heard her voice grow operatic again as she swatted his chin from her shoulder. 'I don't get any sleep. I'm completely exhausted, lying awake till bloody dawn, worrying about all this.'
'Hmm, I thought I heard you roaming the halls like some poor lost ghost last night.' He opened one of the balls of scrawled-over paper on the desk, revealed a drawing of a butterfly, and crumpled it up again, tossing it into the waste-paper basket in one neat shot. 'Look, Georgie, you don't want to push yourself to a breakdown. We have all those designers on staff, why don't you get one of them to . . .'
'No!' Forcing a smile, she tried to battle her rising hysteria. 'I won't do it. I can't. They're paying for Georgina Giordani and Georgina Giordani it shall be.'
Chewing the end of her HB pencil, she experienced a rush of despair, the same terror that hit her at the start of every project, only this time it was worse than ever. No matter that she was a thousand times more successful than that nameless art teacher who'd once sneered at her labours for being 'technically accurate but lacking in soul'. For all that Giordani Designs were rapidly heading towards Laura Ashley status, for all that she had a mini-empire of over a hundred employees in her converted Canary Wharf offices overseeing every aspect of her celebrated lines of clothing, linens, bedspreads, blinds, pillowcases, here she was skulking in her seventeenth-century manor house, relying on her home help to fend off all callers.
Inside
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