Excerpt
‘Ahoy there!’
The boat was close enough now for him to
see the man’s face. He took off his hard hat, pushed his sunglasses up on to
the top of his head and wiped sweat from his face with his forearm. ‘Hey Holly,
look. Company. Let’s see what this is about.’
A pittter-patter of crumbled limestone
trickled from the cliff face as she turned. ‘Oh God, Tim, you said it was okay
to come down here.’
‘It’s perfectly okay.’ He took the few
steps across the narrow strip of pebbles to the water’s edge. ‘Good afternoon!’
The man steered his boat inshore as far
as he dared and switched the outboard into neutral, leaving the boat bobbing on
the clear blue sky. ‘Busy?’
‘Yes. We’re doing some fieldwork.’
‘You’re staying up at the field centre?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I just thought I’d let you know. You’re
on private property.’
‘Yes, I know that.’ The distance between
them made communication difficult and the sunglasses made things worse.
Frustrated, Tim failed to read the man’s intent. The body language wasn’t
great, though — arms splayed to make himself as big as possible, body braced
forward as if to spring. ‘As I understand it, there’s no law of trespass in Spain.’ Being
polite never did any harm. The stranger would surely know the law, too, but it
wouldn’t do any harm to throw it out there in case he didn’t. And it would show
that he couldn’t be intimidated.
Behind him, Holly drew a sharp breath.
‘Tim, I knew this would happen. Let’s just go.’
‘It’ll be fine.’ He didn’t turn; it
wouldn’t do for the stranger to think he could be intimidated.
‘Regardless of that,’ the man shouted, ‘I
think I’d prefer that you keep off my land.’
Dead bodies were one thing, downright
obstruction another. A body came and went, but an unhelpful — no, an aggressive
— landowner was a more permanent obstacle. ‘Let me introduce myself. I’m Dr Tim Stone. I’m a research geologist from the University of…’
‘I
heard you the first time. But either you didn’t hear me, or you weren’t listening.’
‘We should have let them know we were
coming,’ breathed Holly, agonised. ‘Then we’d have known…’
Tim stiffened. ‘This land belongs to a
Señor Valdez. I wrote to him explaining that we’d be here. Out of courtesy, of
course. Because in law I don’t need permission.’
He waited a second, got no reply and
continued. ‘Are you him? I’m guessing you aren’t.’ If he was, then Señor Valdez was the
least likely of Liverpudlians; there was a clearly identifiable tang of the Mersey in the stranger’s voice.
The man found his voice. ‘You’re correct, Dr Stone. I’m not him. I’m his tenant, and as his tenant I
have the right to refuse you access to this land. You should know that I value
my privacy. So I apologise if there’s been any misunderstanding but I think
you’d better leave, sooner rather than later.’
About No Time Like Now
Hiding away from a
disastrous past, Megan McLeod is getting along nicely in her job as housekeeper
at a university field centre in Majorca. But
the arrival of geological researcher, Tim Stone, throws everything into
disarray — because Tim was the
father of the baby she lost some years before and the two of them had parted
very messily indeed.
As if having Tim on
the scene wasn’t bad enough, he's there with his new partner, Holly. But
when in the course of his research he comes upon something extremely nasty
along the cliffs of north Majorca, he’s forced to turn to
Megan for help.
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About Jennifer Young
Jennifer Young is
an Edinburgh-based writer, editor and copywriter. She is interested in a wide
range of subjects and writing media, perhaps reflecting the fact that she has
both arts and science degrees. Jennifer has been writing fiction, including
romantic fiction, for a number of years with several short stories already
published. No Time Like Now is her second published novel; her first novel,
Thank You For The Music, is also set on the Balearic island of Majorca.
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