The words thrust rudely into her thoughts, words in a voice like shifting gravel, and Kelly looked up to meet Grey’s eyes as he slid into a seat across from her, depositing a well-laden breakfast tray down in front of him.
‘Do you mind?’ she replied haughtily, the rejection in her voice as cold as her eyes.
‘No, but the truck probably does,’ he replied calmly. ‘You should know better than to treat an innocent vehicle like that.’
‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she answered, hiding the lie behind a quick mouthful of toast.
‘Like hell you don’t! Personally I couldn’t care less if you’re angry with me, but I wish you wouldn’t take it out on the machinery,’ he replied.
‘Frankly I don’t see that it’s any of your business,’ Kelly said, lowering her eyes from the piercing gaze of his own.
‘Everything that happens in this camp is my business,’ he said. ‘And while I suppose I can’t blame you for being angry, it hurts a little to see you being stupid.’
‘Oh, isn’t that just too bad,’ she simpered. ‘And here I thought you might have been worried about me having an accident or something. But it wasn’t that, of course. You were just worried about the poor truck.’
‘Exactly,’ he snapped, eyes suddenly chillingly cold. ‘If I worried about every weird thing you do, my girl, I’d give myself ulcers before the end of the summer.’
‘Well, when I get back into the kitchen you might end up with worse than that,’ she snarled in return. ‘I’d try wolf poison, but I doubt if it works on animals of the lower type — like rats.’
‘Threats again? I really thought you’d have learned your lesson last time,’ replied Grey. Then he smiled horribly at the look on her face. They both remembered the fiasco of the first revenge attempt, but only she could remember it as a horrible defeat.
‘My God, but you’re a smug, superior sort of creature!’ she retorted.
‘Superior, definitely. But seldom smug,’ he grinned.
‘Well then, stop laughing at me; just finish your breakfast and go off and do whatever it is you do,’ she snapped. ‘I really had hoped to enjoy my breakfast in peace.’
His soft reply was lost in the sudden shuffling sound as the remaining men stacked their breakfast trays and fled the mess trailer in a body. Kelly realised that they were only anxious to get back to their work, but it seemed as if they had obeyed some unspoken command from their leader, and she rebelled at the thought.
‘There,’ he said quietly. ‘Now everybody’s gone, we’re alone here, so go ahead and throw something at me or whatever and get some of the poison out of your system. Go ahead! It’ll do you good.’
Kelly’s anger flared at his insolence, fanned by the fact that she had been thinking of doing exactly what he had advised. He was totally insufferable!
‘I think you’re fantasising just a little,’ she replied with a calmness she didn’t feel. ‘There’s certainly no poison in my system, and I can’t imagine you being significant enough to bother throwing anything at.’
To her surprise, he laughed aloud. ‘I always reckoned I was a lover, not a fighter,’ he chuckled. ‘Nice to see I’m not the only one.’
‘Well, personally I’d rather fight,’ she retorted. ‘Even if you’re not much good at it, it couldn’t be much worse than your lovemaking.’
‘Funny,’ he replied, ‘but I’d be more likely to put it the other way around. Sure as hell your loving is better than your fighting; that much I’m certain of
‘Don’t overrate yourself,’ Kelly replied. ‘You really haven’t enough experience with either one to be making such a sweeping judgment.’
‘Ah, but I have — and what’s more I’ve got witnesses to prove it,’ he grinned, and Kelly winced at the realisation that he had deliberately led her into that reply, like a fish to the bait.
‘Well, I just hope they don’t believe everything they see,’ she replied blindly, already struggling to her feet in the hope that she could flee before the tears came.
‘So do I,’ he replied, and the sudden calm seriousness in his voice made her glance up just as his hands closed upon her shoulders, drawing her against him. ‘I’d hate for them ... for anybody ... to think it was as casual a thing as it looked.’
The strength of him seemed to flow to her through his hands, a strength that mingled with the still-smouldering anger inside her. Kelly stamped her small foot as she wriggled free of his grasp and stepped back to glare angrily up at him.
‘Well, I’d hate for them to think it was anything but casual!’ she snapped. And ignoring the angry pain in his eyes, she turned and dashed through the doorway, fleeing blindly until she had reached the sanctuary of her trailer.
Damn the man! He couldn’t be doing anything but toying with her, unaware of how much he affected her, she thought. Or else all too aware of it, which was even worse. But she watched with unexpectedly mixed feelings as he stomped angrily to his truck and drove out of the camp.
Kelly was much less hostile when she finally woke after a three-hour afternoon nap, but whatever she might have said to Grey was left unsaid, because he didn’t show up for dinner that night, nor for breakfast the next day. Stranger, none of the men engaged in their usual speculation about his whereabouts, so that when he still didn’t return the following night Kelly was none the wiser.
She herself had been busy enough with administrative work that she only consciously missed his presence at meal times, and in the quiet hours of the fading mountain twilight when even the birds seemed to be silenced by the clear, still air and the incredible smells of high-country plants.
She was busy once again with paperwork the following morning, revelling in the quiet of an empty camp, when the throbbing vibration of an approaching helicopter brought her out of the office trailer to stand in wonder as it settled like some gigantic dragonfly in the centre of the parking lot.
The wonder increased as the door opened to reveal a pair of stunning, nylon-clad legs that were quickly followed by a shapely, modern-dressed body and a thatch of expertly-cut blonde hair. Kelly was suddenly over-conscious of her crude pony-tail and stained jump-suit, not to mention her total lack of make-up, but she put on a smile of welcome as the blonde approached her.
‘Good morning,’ she said pleasantly, expecting to receive at least a smile in return. But the blonde only looked through her as if she didn’t exist.
The pale, cold eyes flickered over her, dismissed her as insignificant, then roamed across the empty camp with a faintly predatory look before returning to meet Kelly’s gaze.
‘Mr Scofield ... where is he?’ The words emerged in a sibilant hiss, tinged with an accent that Kelly could recognise only as Scandinavian.
‘He isn’t here, I’m afraid,’ she replied calmly.
‘I can see that,’ retorted the blonde. T asked where he is.’
‘I really don’t know,’ Kelly replied with a coldness of her own. And I really don’t care, she thought silently. But you do, don’t you?
‘He will be returning for luncheon?’ It was more statement than question, leaving Kelly fumbling slightly for a reply.
‘I ... I really don’t know,’ she said, suddenly angry at her own reticence. ‘Would you like to come and have coffee ... or something while you wait for him?’
‘No!’ The word was thrust out aggressively. ‘I do not wait for him. You will tell him that Freda was here.’ The blonde was half turned away when Kelly spoke out.
‘Freda ...?’
The blonde turned back with a silky grin, the smarmy grin of a woman who could view a girl like Kelly as totally insignificant. ‘Freda Jorgensen,’ she replied in a tone that implied it was a name to be recognised and reckoned with. ‘But he will know.’
And she was gone, sliding lithely into the open bubble of the helicopter and slamming the door as it began to thrust its way back into the sparkling blue of the mountain sky.
‘Wowee! Wasn’t that something e
lse?’ came a sign of vivid appreciation from behind Kelly, and she turned to see Fred Griffiths looking longingly after the departing helicopter.
‘Yes, it was, rather,’ Kelly agreed, then smiled at his look of adoration. She enjoyed bantering with Fred, whose quiet manner hid a sharp, rapier wit that was far closer to the British sense of humour than that of most men she had met in Canada,
‘Too bad she wouldn’t stay for coffee,’ he said sadly, turning away to resume his work in the kitchen. ‘Sure would be a change from this scruffy bunch of yahoos we’re cooking for now.’ Then he looked at Kelly with sudden realisation. ‘Oh, I didn’t mean you, of course. It’s just that...’
‘It’s just that blondes really do have more fun,’ she replied bitterly. ‘I understand, Fred.’ And then, much more lightly, ‘Maybe if you’re a good boy, somebody’ll buy you one for Christmas.’
‘Humph! I couldn’t afford to feed it,’ he replied, turning back to the kitchen with a broad grin.
Grey Scofield could afford to feed it, Kelly mused as she returned to her own work after leaving a note on his desk to inform him of his visitor.
Surprisingly enough, she then forgot about the visitor until a knock at her door that evening brought her face to face with Grey, who held the note in his hand as he stood at the step leading into the trailer.
‘Doesn’t say much, this note,’ he said quietly.
‘Neither did Miss Jorgensen,’ Kelly replied tautly, her entire body suddenly tense just at the sight of him.
Grey flashed her a sardonic grin. ‘You don’t sound like you were much impressed,’ he said.
‘Not especially,’ she blurted, and then, ‘although she’s certainly very beautiful.’
‘And rich. You might as well add that in as well.’
‘I didn’t know it’
‘No, you wouldn’t, I suppose. Her father is Sven Jorgensen, who would be one of the biggest private oil magnates in Canada,’ he said. ‘I do a fair bit of work for him.’
‘I see. Well, that explains why she has a private helicopter to do her visiting in,’ Kelly replied, shuddering inside at such a singularly bitchy remark.
If Grey noticed it, he didn’t show the awareness in his cool grey eyes. ‘I suppose you thought at first she was in one of my helicopters,’ he replied with a mocking grin.
‘Since I didn’t know you owned any, the thought didn’t occur to me,’ Kelly replied. ‘Besides, the one she was in had the company name written all over it. Even I couldn’t miss that.’
‘Well, I’m glad there’s something you don’t miss,’ he replied in a cold, flat voice. ‘What I’d like to know now is what happened to the papers she said she’d leave with you. I expected to find them in the office when I got here, and all I found was this rather terse little note.’
Kelly reeled with the shock of it. That bitch! she thought. It became amazingly obvious just how she had been set up, but she couldn’t believe such a thing could happen. There was no reason for Freda Jorgensen to do such a thing, but it had obviously been done.
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Miss ... Jorgensen brought nothing with her, gave nothing to me. She only said to tell you she’d been here, that’s all.’
‘Oh, come now, Kelly. She flew all the way out here specifically to bring me the bloody documents. And you expect me to sit here and believe she just turned around and flew away again without leaving them?’ Grey’s tone was mockingly incredulous.
‘Personally I don’t care what you think,’ Kelly snarled. ‘She came, she said to tell you she was here, and she left again. Full stop. She had no documents with her that I saw, she never mentioned any documents to me and I must say, Mr Scofield, that I damned well don’t like the insinuations you’re making!’
‘I’m not making any insinuations,’ he growled in return. ‘It was agreed that Freda would leave the documents with you if I wasn’t here. If you say she didn’t, okay. I’m not calling you a liar and I’m not accusing you of anything, so stop going all prissy about it. I just want to know what happened to my documents, that’s all.’
‘Well then, I suggest you ask the person who had them last,’ retorted Kelly. ‘Which, if I may remind you, wasn’t me. Now if that’s all you’ve come to talk about I’d like to get to bed; I’m rather tired.’
‘Right. Goodnight, then,’ he said, turning away abruptly to walk swiftly back towards his own quarters and leaving Kelly standing dumbly on her doorstep, her lips framed silently around her own goodnight.
Kelly slept badly, her mind troubled by the deliberate attempt by Freda Jorgensen to show her in a bad light. There seemed, on the surface of it, no logical explanation, she thought. She had never before met the woman, and she was relatively certain the blonde wouldn’t have noticed her on those occasions she had seen Freda in restaurants.
Could Grey have mentioned Kelly to Freda? It also seemed rather unlikely, and yet the blonde woman had quite deliberately engineered her visit so as to see Kelly, and apparently to cause trouble for her as well.
Why? She gnawed at the problem throughout the early hours of the night, and as a result finally got to sleep so late that she overslept in the morning. It was only the sound of an approaching helicopter that startled her into wakefulness.
Peering from her trailer window, she saw immediately that Freda Jorgensen had returned, and when the woman stepped down from helicopter bubble she clearly held a sheaf of documents in one manicured hand. That was all Kelly noticed; she herself raced to the bathroom and did her quickest-ever job of washing away the sleep from her eyes and preparing to meet the world.
For world, read Freda-bitch-Jorgensen, Kelly mused, brushing rapidly at her long red hair and idly wishing it was slightly shorter and more manageable.
Make-up? No, she thought. She was out of the habit, and to arrive wearing it would be simply too obvious. There was no way she could openly compete with Freda’s blonde loveliness anyway.
It wasn’t until she had slipped into a clean blouse and jeans and was reaching for her sandals that the enormity of her thinking suddenly came clear to her. Competing? Competing for the attentions of a man she had almost surrendered to only days before, yet spurned haughtily only last night? A man she was quite prepared to dislike intensely?
‘I must be going mad,’ she said absently to her image in the bathroom mirror. It was one thing to face the fact that Grey Scofield desired her, or indeed that she felt a strong physical attraction for him. But the strength of that attraction was quite something else again, and when she emerged from her trailer for the short but seemingly endless walk to the kitchen complex, there was a new, almost alien seriousness in her manner.
Her mood was not improved by the absence of both Grey and Freda. Kelly had a frightening mental picture of them sharing a tall, cool drink — and what else? — in Grey’s quarters, then shook the image aside as she buried herself in the task of checking out the quantities in the larder.
But her senses were tuned to Grey, a fact she was forced to realise when the dining room door opened and she knew without looking that it was he who had entered. The staccato click of high heels following him in was all the confirmation Kelly required, so she wasn’t surprised when she heard him ask Marie about getting some coffee.
Kelly came within an inch of shouting that coffee wasn’t available outside meal hours, then derided herself for ever thinking in so petty a fashion.
When the coffee was ready, she said, ‘I’ll take it out, Marie,’ and promptly did so. Grey looked up with vague surprise when Kelly deposited the tray on the table between himself and Freda, but his expression quickly cleared when she merely nodded and turned to leave without speaking.
‘Hang on a minute, Kelly,’ he said. ‘You haven’t actually met Freda, have you?’ Surprised, Kelly could only shake her head and stand while he formulated a brief introduction.
It was no consolation to be met by a dazzling smile from the tall Scandinavian, who immediately launched into an
apology for the mix-up over the documents.
‘It was my fault entirely and I still don’t know how it happened,’ she explained in her husky, lilting voice. ‘But when I found out that Grey wasn’t here as expected, I forgot all about the documents until he radioed last night. Papa was not amused, as they say, and I understand Grey was perfectly beastly to you about it.’
‘Hardly beastly,’ Kelly replied with a shrug, unable to match the woman’s buoyant approach with the haughty snub of the day before.
‘Oh, but he’s always beastly, aren’t you, darling?’ Freda replied, reaching out to stroke Grey’s bare forearm with her long, perfectly-manicured nails. ‘Now you must apologise to Kelly, and she must forgive you and join us for coffee. Please, I insist,’ she snapped, as Kelly made to turn away.
‘Really it isn’t necessary,’ said Kelly, who wanted only to get away from the pair of them. She was intensely conscious of Grey’s eyes upon her, savouring her discomfort, and beneath the bantering of Freda’s manner she sensed the seriousness of a cat watching a mouse.
Freda Jorgensen combined beauty and sophistication with a thinly-disguised feline instinct that Kelly knew she couldn’t possibly combat. Kelly was, normally, a direct and open person, she lacked the predatory instincts that glowed from the blonde beauty like an aura.
‘I do apologise, Kelly,’ came the growling, gravelly voice of the man who so thoroughly sparked Freda’s cattiness, and the voice played upon Kelly’s heart-strings like the fingers of a concert musician. Her legs turned to water and she felt a strange warmth floating into her middle.
‘I said it wasn’t necessary,’ she replied with unexpected calmness. ‘You have the documents, and that’s certainly all that’s important. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a great deal of work to do.’ She turned and fled before Grey could speak again, hating herself for her cowardice but unable to handle the sudden realisation that she was far too nearly in love with Grey for her own good.
‘Stupid, stupid, stupid,’ she chanted to herself as she blindly tried to itemise the contents of the huge pantry a few moments later. The violent jealousy that had surged up in her when Freda had touched Grey’s arm frightened her even more in retrospect than it had at the time.
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