Phantom Lover

by Susan Napier

  Back in the living-room he put down the suitcase, but not her arm, as he slotted the bolt on the French doors into place and turned to check the windows. ‘Where are your keys?’

  ‘On the hall table,’ Honor blurted out automatically before finding the energy to struggle briefly as he swept her towards the door. ‘You can’t be serious about this—’

  ‘I’m always serious.’ That was a lie; many of his letters had been deliciously light-hearted.

  ‘But—this is ridiculous.’

  ‘I’m not leaving you here. Not until I’m sure where you fit in—’

  ‘I don’t fit in anywhere!’ Honor wailed, as he scooped up her house-keys and hustled her out of her front door on to the uneven paved pathway.

  ‘Until I know that for certain I’m not taking any chances. I can’t afford to. There’s too much at stake. Not just my personal safety or that of my family, but of other people, too. Maybe you really do have no connection with the extortion; maybe you are just a rotten coincidence,’ he said, pocketing the keys after locking the door. ‘But whether it was planned or not you’re another source of pressure when I least need it, another distraction when I need to focus all my concentration and devote all my resources to my primary problem. At least if I know where you are I won’t have to worry about what you’re up to.

  ‘And besides,’ he said, as he opened the door of the sleek Mercedes parked outside her dainty white picket fence and pushed her into the back seat, along with her suitcase, ‘if you are as innocent as you claim, has it occurred to you that by admitting an association with me you might have admitted yourself to a share of my danger? You could be a target for the fanatics, too, if they get the idea that they can hurt me by hurting you. If so you’ll be safer where there’s plenty of security.’

  ‘Oh, so now this abduction is for my sake?’ Honor said sullenly, to hide the shiver of fear that his words invoked.

  She didn’t doubt that Adam believed what he was saying. The frustration and bitterness in his voice expressed the rage of unaccustomed helplessness. She could see that he hated being a victim. By seizing control of her, he was regaining for himself a small measure of his power to control events around him.

  He looked down at her grimly.

  ‘You doubt me?’ He unhooked a slim black folding cell-phone from his black belt and flipped it open, punching in some numbers.

  He rose to his full height, carrying on a muttered conversation she couldn’t hear properly before bending down and thrusting the phone towards her. ‘Take it.’

  She did, gingerly. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Detective Inspector Malcolm Marshall here, miss...’

  Honor listened in silence as her former interrogator confirmed Adam’s view, albeit in a considerably watered-down version!

  ‘The threats that Mr Blake has received have been so general in nature that I can’t say categorically that you’re not in any danger whatsoever. However, neither can I say there is any positive indication you are. Therefore any sensible precaution you took to lower your profile for a little while wouldn’t go amiss. I know Mr Blake would feel personally responsible if anything untoward did happen and in the circumstances I think his suggestion that you share his security arrangements is a sound and rather generous gesture....’

  ‘Nice to have influence in high places!’ Honor muttered as she handed the phone back, sensing from the amiable casualness with which Adam delivered his thanks and ended the call that all that official waffling had been something of a snow-job.

  He shut the door with a very definitive clunk and slid into the seat in front of her, not even bothering to deny it. ‘Yes, it is; that’s why I use it.’

  An automatic desire to puncture that smugness made Honor begin to scrabble at the nearest door-handle just as Adam hit the central-locking button.

  ‘Don’t bother, the rear doors are fitted with baby-locks,’ he said, turning on the lights and engine. ‘You don’t have to panic. Marshall’s a professional—and a damned good cop. He’s not going to risk a high-flying career by laying himself open to a charge of misuse of police powers. He wouldn’t lie to you, not even for me. But he’s perfectly happy to endorse an idea that makes his job easier...the fewer people running around loose on this case, the less chance there is of an information leak that might jeopardise a quick arrest.’

  Honor scowled, instinctively prepared to believe him, even when he added coldly, ‘As far as I’m concerned you can think of it as a form of protective custody. I still want some answers out of you and when I’ve got this other business out of the way I’m going to get them! Now stop bleating and do up your seatbelt.’

  Honor obeyed, almost relieved to succumb to another wave of tiredness as Adam set the car in motion. Maybe he was right. Maybe tomorrow the personal antagonism that the upheavals of the day had caused to flare between them would have died down enough to clear up the misunderstanding with a simple explanation.

  And if not, at least after a good sleep she would feel refreshed enough to renew the fight on a more even footing. She would just slug doggedly away until she rammed it through that thick skull that she was exactly who and what she said she was. It might take a while, as he threatened, but at least she would have the pleasure of a grovelling apology to look forward to when he finally— An awful thought suddenly occurred to her.

  ‘Wait a moment! Oh, no! Stop the car!’ The seatbelt nearly cut her in half as her shriek of panic led Adam to jam the brake to the floor. As she choked and gasped and rubbed her scratched and sore chest it occurred to Honor that his instant reaction to her frantic command had been a bizarre act of trust in someone he mightily distrusted.

  He swivelled in his seat to look at her. ‘What’s the matter? Are you all right?’ he asked sharply, and she wished that she could afford to bask in that concern. But she knew it wouldn’t last.

  ‘Monty. He hates being alone and he’s quite capable of running away if he thinks I’ve gone off and left him.’ She watched fatalistically as the concern metamorphosed into fury. ‘He might get killed on the road or poisoned by possum-bait or something. If you don’t bring him with us I’m going to scream blue murder and fight like fury all the way. I’m not leaving here without my cat!’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FOR the second time in twenty-four hours Honor found herself faced with the elegant grandeur of the Blake house. Discreet floodlighting of the two-storeyed, white-painted wooden façade made it even more intimidating by night than it had been earlier.

  Reluctantly she opened the car door and stepped out on to the gravel, clutching the cardboard pet-carrier which bulged and rocked to its occupant’s futile assault.

  You and me both, Monty, she thought wryly as a savage yowl of frustration reverberated inside the carton and the driver of the car slammed his door with an expressive force before striding around to the boot to remove her suitcase.

  ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ Adam growled, moving up beside her. He had subjected her to a blistering silence during the ride over, and the one time that she had tried to break the tension she had blundered disastrously.

  She had tentatively asked how Zachary Blake and his family were going to react to the added burden of an unexpected guest at this awkward time.

  ‘Is that supposed to be some kind of tasteless joke?’ he’d lashed back coldly.

  ‘I—no—’ she’d stammered, thinking that nothing about the man seemed simple or straightforward.

  ‘You expect me to believe that you don’t know that Zach is dead?’

  ‘Dead?’ Honor was shocked. Her voice had dropped to a sepulchral whisper as she’d pondered the horrendous possibilities in the light of the current situation.

  ‘My God, you mean—murdered?’

  ‘No, I don’t mean murdered,’ Adam had said through clenched teeth. ‘My brother died of an embolism three months ago.’

  ‘Oh...I’m very sorry...I didn’t know.’ Honor had looked away from his angry face, memories of the grief sh
e had suffered after her father’s death three years ago flooding through her and bringing with it understanding.

  She had done quite a few irrational things herself in the weeks after her bluff and cheerful father’s fatal stroke, before time had begun its healing work and restored her emotional equilibrium. Might not the same kind of thing have happened to Adam? The timing of those love-letters was about right. Had grief over his brother’s death caused him to behave with an uncharacteristic recklessness that he was now bitterly regretting?

  ‘Since the newspaper you help produce ran a rather large obituary at the time I find that very difficult to believe.’ His cutting answer had interrupted her sympathetic musing and she’d compressed her lips to control the impulse to slice back. He had every right to be angry if he genuinely thought that she had been pretending ignorance for some obscure motive of her own.

  ‘It was probably while I was away on holiday. I spent a couple of weeks skiing in Queenstown about then.’

  His grunt could have been one of acceptance or disbelief so she’d added pointedly, ‘In fact, I remember writing to you on the monogrammed notepaper of the hotel I was staying at, so it would be easy enough to check the dates—’ She’d stopped as she realised that she was assuming that her letters to him had been as cherished as his to her. For all she knew he might have thrown them away as soon as he had read them. The thought had made her dwindle in her seat.

  He hadn’t even grunted that time. He’d merely glared out into the headlit ribbon of road unwinding out of the darkness. The subject was closed and she’d sensed that any attempt to continue it would be just as rigidly ignored. The barrier of his anger was impenetrable. He fiercely resented the fact that she knew things about him that he didn’t want her—hadn’t intended her—to know, intimate thoughts that were more easily written than spoken. The connection established through their letters wasn’t a bond as far as he was concerned, it was a choke-chain, a humiliating shackle that would inhibit him every time he looked at her.

  Her eyes had fallen to his big hands effortlessly controlling the steering-wheel and she’d winced at the scratches that now adorned the hard knuckles. Monty had not taken kindly to being placed in confinement. He had stiffened his splayed legs and fought every inch of the way. Even while Adam had cursed and sworn to wring the animal’s ungrateful neck she noticed that he had handled him as gently as the slashing claws would allow. She wondered sourly if he would have been as restrained in his handling if she had bitten and scratched and physically fought the imposition of his will. She had a feeling not!

  For the rest of the journey she had brooded on that galling inequity.

  She looked at Adam now as he stood before her on the gravelled driveway—big, impatient, arrogantly domineering. Actually he and Monty had an awful lot in common, she thought acidly. They were both extremely stubborn, they objected violently to opposition and on encountering it displayed a sad tendency to lash out at the nearest handy target.

  ‘I was just wondering whether another policeman was going to come barrelling out of the shrubbery at me,’ Honor lied, unwilling to admit that one of the reasons she was hanging back was because she felt nervous at what she was going to find inside the house. Would she face more hostility and suspicion? Who were the inhabitants and what, if anything, had Adam told them about her?

  ‘In other words you want to know what our security arrangements are,’ he said caustically. ‘Forget it. I’m not that stupid!’

  ‘Really? That’s funny—you certainly give that impression!’ Honor snapped back, stung by the fresh evidence of his mistrust, and marched ahead of him up the wooden stairs to the railed veranda which wrapped around three sides of the house.

  She had to wait, straight-backed, as he sorted through the bunch of keys he had carried from the car, but before he inserted the correct one in the brass lock he answered one of her unspoken questions with a terse, ‘I don’t want my mother upset.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My mother. Her health hasn’t been the best since Zach’s death. I don’t want her involved in any of this. If you have anything to say, say it to me, not to her. Understand?’

  She understood an order when she heard one. She reacted instinctively, bristling. She had lost one too many battles today to kowtow to someone who had no authority to make demands. She looked up at his grimly handsome face, thinking that it was too bad somebody had already broken his arrogant nose for him.

  ‘Or...?’

  His eyes darkened to pure gold menace. ‘Or I’ll make damned sure you regret it.’

  Her thick dark brows lowered in what she liked to think was a threatening glower, the smattering of freckles on her smooth, winter-pale forehead jumping to attention as she rumpled it into soft pleats. ‘You can try!’

  He blinked at her pugnacious challenge, as if disconcerted by the novelty of opposition. Then he took a step closer, squaring his impressive shoulders, and Honor might have weakened and cringed but for the fact that the door suddenly whipped open between them.

  ‘Adam, you’re back! I thought I heard voices out here. And who’s this you’ve brought to see me? Well, well...come in, come in, don’t stand out there, you might catch a chill...’

  Still chattering delightedly, the elderly woman in oddly mismatched clothing drew Honor into the lighted hallway with a gnarled hand on her wrist, ignoring Adam’s attempted explanation as he followed them inside.

  ‘This is Honor Sheldon, Mother. She’s going to stay with us for a few days—’

  ‘How lovely to see you, my dear!’ His mother overrode his curt statement with a gushing welcome. To Honor’s bewilderment she was swept into a warm and surprisingly powerful hug from an old lady who was supposedly in frail health. She was tall and very thin, her white hair permed into a wild fluffiness that seemed to billow about her lined face as she beamed into her guest’s confused eyes.

  ‘I just knew that one of these days Adam was going to bring his girlfriend to see me,’ she said gleefully, the fine network of lines on her face deepening with her smile as she barely paused for breath. ‘He’s been so elusive I knew he had to have someone very special tucked away and now here you are! You must be very good for him, Honor, because I can see he’s looking very bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.’ She cast her incredulous son a teasing look before her beaming brown eyes moved back to Honor’s flushed face. ‘And don’t you two look good together—Adam so tall and husky and you so feminine—heart-high and lovely and curvy...’

  It was certainly a very kindly and diplomatic way of calling someone short and fat, thought Honor wryly, knowing that her baggy jeans and faded shirt weren’t very flattering, let alone feminine. She opened her mouth to correct Mrs Blake’s disastrous first impression but Adam got there before her.

  ‘She’s not—’

  ‘Now, Adam, don’t try and pretend that this is just a casual visit,’ his mother scolded him. ‘You know you’ve never brought any of your lady-friends to stay before. You can’t tell me that Honor isn’t different. Why, I can see she is. And she’s blushing...’

  ‘That’s because you’re embarrassing her—’

  ‘Nonsense, dear! You’re not embarrassed, are you, Honor?’

  Shocked, confused, even amused—but no, Honor wasn’t embarrassed. She was enjoying the sight of Adam’s angry chagrin too much. Why should she help the surly brute out of the hole he had dug for himself?

  ‘No, of course I’m not.’

  ‘There! You see, Adam, the girl knows that she doesn’t have to stand on ceremony with family.’ She tilted her head confidingly towards Honor but made no attempt to lower her voice.

  ‘My son is quite ridiculously protective, you know. He has this odd idea that I live in quite the past and don’t know what sort of thing goes on in the modern world. But I know that young men and women have a great deal more freedom than they did in my day. Not that I approve of young people living together willy-nilly...’

  ‘Honor and I are not living togeth
er—’ Adam began firmly.

  ‘You will be while you’re both here, dear,’ his mother pointed out with inescapable logic, and Honor almost giggled at the frustrated expression on Adam’s face.

  ‘We’re just—’ Adam faltered and looked at Honor, as if she might provide him with a suitably innocuous explanation of her presence.

  She raised her eyebrows at him.

  ‘Just good friends?’ she suggested sweetly. To her gratification a flare of red appeared along the grim cheekbones.

  ‘Of course you are, dear,’ his mother soothed fondly, looking from one to the other with an expression of loving disbelief. Adam looked as if he was about to explode and Honor decided that the joke had gone far enough.

  ‘Er—Mrs Blake—’

  ‘Oh, call me Joy! I just know we’re going to be wonderful friends. I’ve always got on very well with my sons’ wives.’

  ‘Mother!’ Adam’s protest was a muted roar. So much for his protective instincts!

  ‘We’re not getting married, Mrs—Joy—’ interceded Honor hastily. ‘I mean, we hardly know each other—’

  Joy Blake seemed undismayed by the contradiction of her fantasies. She raised her hands protestingly and chuckled. ‘I know, I know—it’s too soon to trust your feelings. I know just what you’re going through. I’m afraid the Blake men are prone to lightning attractions and whirlwind courtships. Adam’s father and I met and married in two weeks when he was on furlough from the army. Well, once you settle in here and see how welcome you are I’m sure you’ll be able to make up your mind about my son. He’s a fine man, if a bit set in his ways. Goodness, dear, what is it you have in the box? Whatever it is, it sounds as if it’s in great distress...’