Alastair Dees called out as his wife slammed the door shut behind her and kicked off her expensive pumps. Paula didn’t bother to reply as she let herself out the back door and into the garden, which at the moment was a riot of blooms, lovingly tended by Alastair in his every spare moment. Normally, Paula loved to sit out there in the evening, enjoying the blissful tranquility that was her sweet little cottage, but tonight she was positively livid. A promising deal had fallen through, and then she had the encounter with Lexi Maxwell – all before noon. The rest of the day wasn’t any better, with Paula staring resentfully at the telephone which rang only once in the afternoon – an inquiry that amounted to nothing. Business usually picked up a little at the end of the school year, with parents opting to move while the children were off for the summer holidays, but there weren’t many properties for sale anywhere in the village or thereabouts, and the third quarter promised to be much slower than the second, which at least yielded the sale of the Hughes place.
