A Chance Encounter by Rae Shaw (best ereader for academics .TXT) 📕

‘She dazzles everybody, doesn't she?’ said the tall man blocking out the spotlight behind Hettie. ‘Is this Ellen?’

Before she could offer it, Jackson Haynes scooped up Ellen's hand. She expected him to kiss the knuckles, Godfather style. Instead, he gave a momentary shake and released it. The impression he left lasted longer than that swift touch. He hadn’t dropped his gaze.

‘Mark said you're a keen archaeologist.’

There wasn’t a question mark at the end of that sentence. He already knew a lot about her. Ellen shot a fiery glance at her brother. Now he had pink ears. What else had he revealed about her? ‘Amateur and relatively untested. I’d like to study.’

‘My brother Luke and I know somebody, a professor.’ Jackson’s eyes twinkled under the lights. ‘He’s well connected.’

Ellen said nothing again. Mark fidgeted with his beer glass.

She and Mark moved to explain to another new person who she was – always Mark's sister, but not everyone knew Mark. He was a newcomer too. The introductions grew quicker, less involved. She was an appendix, always attached to him and framed by his friendship with Jackson and Hettie. Mark's boss was surrounded by a skilled group of sycophants, fawners of wealth and power. She hid her disgust. She was a fish out of water and drowning. Although it was more like suffocating. She briefly bumped into Hettie again. Razzle dazzle Hettie with her charm and her effervescent spirit. A mother free from the chains of babies, she shone under the lights. Mark couldn't stop looking at her. So, he fancied his boss's wife. The infatuation might explain his desperate need to be part of Jackson's fan club.

As for Jackson Haynes, he had to have a hidden agenda regarding Mark. And her, too, because Haynes watched her almost as much as he tracked his wife about the club.

Ellen wasn't enjoying herself. While Mark hobnobbed his way up the social ladder, she drifted, aimlessly circulating. One bald man, who introduced himself as Graham, wanted to know what she had dug out of the ground. She should have listed shards of pottery, coins, smashed roof tiles, clay pipes amongst the unexplained, including the fragile pieces of an iron age weapon – her greatest find and now on display in a museum in Manchester. Instead, she blurted, ‘Knives. I find knives.’ She turned on her heels and hurried to the bathroom.

Razzles was a mistake. She wished she was somewhere quieter. Cooler, too. The swelter of bodies in close proximity burnt her skin. It seemed a ludicrous way to spend time – squeezed into a confined space and blasted with loud voices and music when you could be outside in the fresh air. Digging in the dirt was more fun, as was running with Nicky.

She finished another glass of wine, then weaved through the sea of bodies to Mark's side. ‘I want to leave,’ she whispered into his ear. She had to say it twice before he heard her correctly.

He glared. ‘Leave. It's not even midnight.’

‘I don't like it. The whole atmosphere is a tawdry, chauvinistic power play. I want to go.’

He heard her clearly that time.

‘Who's your friend, Mark?’ a bearded man asked, swaying, leering at her sparking sequins, especially the ones that decorated her bosom.

‘My sister. Hands off.’

The intruder crashed into a table and his beer spilt over his shirt.

Jackson filled the empty space. ‘Okay?’

‘Sure,’ Mark said. ‘Hogan is a little worse for wear.’ The stumbling Hogan was jettisoned from Jackson's inner sanctuary by the minder. Jackson grunted something incomprehensible but seemed satisfied.

‘I'm afraid we have to go. Ellen is a little tired.’ Mark's excuse ensured Ellen bore the brunt of her brother's annoyance.

‘It's been a pleasure to have your company, Miss Clewer,’ Jackson said pleasantly.

‘Devera. Ellen Devera.’

Mark's body stiffened, just as she expected.

‘My grandfather's name,’ she said unnecessarily.

It was their mother's maiden name, too, but she wouldn't mention Deidre in the same breath as their beloved, late grandfather. She hadn’t changed it legally. By not uttering their name, she maintained a distance from her immediate family.

Jackson's eyebrows furrowed. ‘Perhaps you should take her home, Mark.’

‘Too much drink,’ Mark muttered, apologetically.

Ellen fumed; they treated her like a child. Mark bundled her through the crowd, passed the revellers to the exit.

The frosty atmosphere between them didn't thaw in the taxi. Mark took her to his apartment and the spare bed. She was too pissed to care where she slept. She sent a text to Nicky, warning him she wasn't going to join him for the Sunday morning run. She lay rigid and listened to Mark potter about as he readied himself for bed. This could be her home. She needed to save money; Mark's offer was too good to ignore.

She twisted on her side, drifting, never quite sure if she was awake or inebriated; she came face to face in the dim light with the boxes and witnessed the spectacle of her father perched on one of them, drumming his fingers on the lid. His sunken eyes formed dark pits, and below his ragged nose were his swollen lips. That was how she remembered him from the last visit – patched up bruises. Trapped alone with the vacant expression of an apparition, she grappled with nausea. He might as well be a ghost, except Bill wasn't dead.

‘Go away,’ she said to the shadow.

The hallucination wavered, then vanished.

In the morning, she called for a cab to take her home. Mark wasn't up. She left a note.

I'll move in with you if you get rid of those boxes. I don't want to see them.

  11

Julianna

Julianna hot-desked nearly every day. She generally either hijacked a spare workstation in the security office in the basement, which was a ghastly pit with no windows, or she