Page 53 of Fe
The smile fell off his face. “Your loss.” He glared, then stamped back into the pub.
By the time Fen was in bed, he was exhausted. Morgan had asked him to text when he was back safe and Fen had. Tired as he was, sleep eluded him. He kept thinking that if Ripley hadn’t offered him the money and just asked him out, he’d have said yes in an instant. So why couldn’t he say yes to this? Ripley was a messed-up guy and somehow that appealed to Fen because he was messed-up too. For different reasons but…
He fell asleep thinking he was going to say yes.
He woke intending to say no.
By the time he got into work, he was back to yes.
Fen was lonely. He could have six months of not being lonely and a chunk of money at the end of it.
What if he fell in love with Ripley?Then I’d end up with a broken heart. But at least he’d have known what love was like.
Fen had set the model ship aside to dry after he’d applied a coat of paint to the hull, and was busy cleaning a dirt-encrusted oil painting, when he heard raised voices coming from the office. Alistair was in there with Charles.
Fen’s phone pinged with a message from Alistair asking him to go and help Tara and send Scott in to see them. Fen took off his apron and gloves and went into the shop.
“Alistair and your dad want you in the office,” Fen told Scott.
“What for?”
“No idea.”
As Fen helped Tara put up Christmas decorations, he could still hear loud voices and he wondered what the hell was going on.
“What’s up, do you know?” Tara asked.
“No.” Maybe Scott’s father had registered how little work his son did and the only thing that interested him was online gambling. Maybe Scott had racked up a big debt and Charles had found out.
A few minutes later, Scott came back. “They want you now.”
So Fen was wrong.
When he walked in, Charles sat behind the desk and Alistair leaned against the wall. Judging by the expressions on their faces, whatever this was, it was serious.
“Sit down,” Charles snapped.
Fen hadn’t done anything wrong, well not that he knew of. Even so his pulse was racing.
“A ring has gone missing,” Charles said. “Know anything about it?”
“No. I’ve not shown anyone a ring for months.”
“It didn’t go missing from here,” Alistair said. “The Belmont house.”
Oh shit.“I didn’t see any rings.”
“It went missing from a bedroom we weren’t supposed to go into,” Alistair said.
“Are you accusing me of having taken it?” Fen tried to keep his voice even but he was upset.
“It was one of you,” Charles snapped. “Obviously not Alistair. Or Scott. So…?”
NowFen was furious. “What? Just because you don’t want to believe your son could do it, it has to be me? What about another valuation company? An estate agent? A burglar? A neighbour? A visitor? Or it could have got lost down the side of the bed! Dropped down the plughole.”
“They’ve done a thorough search. The other man who went to do a valuation was with Mr Belmont all the time.” Alistair’s face was grey.
“I didn’t take it,” Fen said. “I didn’t go into any room I wasn’t supposed to.”
