She pushed the coffee over to him. He looked just the kind of guy to take his coffee black, no sugar.
‘Does your company think that they can send someone who’s dressed down for the day in the hope that we might just soften our stance? Maybe be deluded into thinking that he’s not the stuffed shirt lawyer that he actually is?’ She narrowed her eyes and tried and failed to imagine him as a stuffed shirt lawyer.
‘Ah...’ Mr Frank murmured. ‘Thatploy.’
‘Yes.Thatploy. Well, it won’t work. My team and I are committed to the cause and you can tell your employers that we intend to fight this abhorrent and unnecessary development with every ounce of breath in us.’
‘You overestimate my qualifications,’ Mr Frank said smoothly, sipping the coffee. ‘Excellent coffee, by the way. I’m no lawyer. But were I to be one, then I would try very hard not to be a stuffed shirt one.’
‘Not a lawyer? Then who the heck are you? Angie said that you were here about the land.’
‘Angie being the girl with the spiky hair and the nose ring?’
‘That’s correct. She also happens to be an extremely efficient secretary and a whizz at IT.’
‘Well, she was certainly right in one respect. Iamhere about the land. Here to join the noble cause.’
* * *
Art’s plan had been simple. It had come to him in a blinding flash shortly after Harold had informed him that money wasn’t going to make the problem of squatters on his land go away.
If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.
Naturally he’d known what to expect but somehow, in the flesh, the woman staring at him through narrowed eyes wasn’tquitethe hippy he had originally imagined.
He couldn’t put his finger on what was different and then, in the space of a handful of seconds, decided that it was a case of imagination playing tricks because she was certainly dressed in just the sort of attire he’d expected. Some sort of loose trousers in an assortment of clashing colours. Practical, given the hot weather, but, in all other respects, frankly appalling. A shapeless green vest-like top and a pair of sandals that, like the trousers, were practical but ticked absolutely no other boxes as far as he was concerned.
Her hair seemed to be staging a full-scale revolt against its half-hearted restraints. It was very curly and strands of it waved around her cheeks.
But the woman emanatedpresenceand that was something he couldn’t deny.
She wasn’t beautiful, not in the conventional sense of the word, but she was incredibly arresting and for a few seconds Art found himself in the novel situation of temporarily forgetting why he was sitting here in a kitchen that looked as though a bomb had recently been detonated in it.
And then it all came back. He would join the band of merry protestors. He would get to know the woman. He would convince her from the position of insider that she was fighting a losing battle.
He would bring her round to his way of thinking, which was simply a matter of bringing her round to common sense, because she was never going to win this war.
But strong-arm tactics weren’t going to work because, as Harold had made perfectly clear, storming in and bludgeoning the opposition would be catastrophic in a community as tightly knit as this one clearly was.
He was simply going to persuade her into seeing his point of view and the best and only way he could do that would be from the inside, from the position of one of them. From the advantageous position of trust.
Art didn’t need opposition. He needed to butter up the unruly mob because he had long-term plans for the land—plans that included sheltered accommodation for his autistic stepbrother, to whom he was deeply attached.
He hadn’t gone straight to the site though, choosing instead to make himself known to the woman standing firmly between him and his plans. He was good with women. Women liked him. Quite a few positively adored him. And there weren’t many who didn’t fall for his charm. Art wasn’t vain but he was realistic, so why not use that charm to work its magic on this recalcitrant woman?
If that failed to do the trick then of course he would have to go back to the drawing board, but it was worth a shot.
To this end, he had taken his unprecedented leave of absence. A few days to sort out urgent business that wouldn’t happily sit on the back burner and now here he was.
He was sporting the beginnings of a beard, was letting his hair grow, and the sharp handmade suits had ceded to the faded jeans and a black polo shirt.
‘Really?’ Rose said with a certain amount of cynicism.
‘Indeed. Why the suspicion?’
‘Because you don’t exactly fit the role of the protestors we have here.’
‘Don’t I? How so?’
